This is a B/W midrange/"good stuff" deck built for post-rotation Standard. Desecration Demon, Blood Baron of Vizkopa and Obzedat, Ghost Council are all excellent value creatures and together provide great incentive for B/W midrange to be a thing. The Baron in particular is a very impressive card, as his dual protection lets him almost completely shutdown various decks.
All of the creatures in this deck are essentially value creatures (even Tithe Drinker). Lifebane Zombie provides either a reasonable evasive clock or a merciless 2 for 1 that pummels Voice of Resurgence decks from the get go. He certainly gets boarded out when he isn't hitting, but the upside of him hitting is so high that running him as a 4-of just feels right.
Erebos, God of the Dead is a bit of an experiment. On its own, Erebos may be one of the most underwhelming God cards, with a "meh" passive and a seemingly overpriced draw ability. In this deck though, Erebos functions as a strong card advantage engine (the life loss is compensated for by Extort/Obzedat/Lifelink/etc) whose passive actually fits this deck really well, helping us bleed out our opponent. Shutting down Archangel of Thune is a really, really nice perk too. Lastly, although this deck can certainly achieve 5+ devotion every now and then (especially post-board) doing so isn't even necessary to make Erebos worth running.
In the non-creature column, 10 removal spells in 4x Devour Flesh, 2x Doom Blade and 4x Hero's Downfall are excellent in slowing down any creature based game plans your opponents may have. Devour Flesh also has cute synergy with Erebos, although it is in here as a 4-of not for that but for its indiscriminate nature. Outside of removal, Read the Bones gives us card advantage/selection for a small price of life/mana, and Thoughtseize is the best discard spell in Standard (kept down to 2x copies so that we don't risk awful 2-3x Thoughtseize hands against aggro Game 1).
The deck's sideboard is still rough and generic, but does offer the deck options in tailoring itself to better fight aggro/control/midrange. High Priest of Penance is a narrow but powerful card that is in the 75 simply as a concession to red aggro; the Priest can be a 2-for-1 waiting to happen against red decks or a Fog on one attacker + 1-for-1. Doom Blade is Doom Blade and a great four of against non-black, non-control decks.
One more Ghost Daddy is in the sideboard for grinder matchups, where the card absolutely excels. Pithing Needle hoses Morphling 2.0, Maze's End (ugh) and random Planeswalkers. 4x Sin Collector features over Duress as the 2-for-1 appeals to me more than the counterability of Sin Collector, although Duress may be a better call depending on how control decks end up being built. Lastly, 2x Underworld Connections offers more gas to use against midrange/control where early wins are out of the question.
I'm on the fence about cutting Tithe Drinker for Soldier of the Pantheon (he seems like a better blocker), making room for Ratchet Bomb/Blind Obedience in the sideboard, and testing out 1-2 copies of Whip of Erebos for its synergy with Obzedat. However, the deck as is seems very solid from proxy testing.
Thanks for reading.
