The second version of my sacrifice deck. Still a work in Progress.
How to play this deck,
The deck revolves around getting lots of low cost creatures in to play to sacrifice them, reaping the benefits of Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat's abilities. Some of the creatures are capable of sacrificing themselves, others require an enabler such as Viscera Seer or Bloodthrone Vampire. Hangarback Walker generates additional creatures on it's death for even more damage, and the Pawn of Ulamog turns ALL of my non token creatures into a miniature hangarback walker. This deck certainly seems weak at first but it can get to the point where the opponent looks at the board state and suddenly realizes you have a win condition on the table. Decks focusing around creature kill spells often regret their actions as the damage piles on point by point over several turns, and the deck can occasionally get under bounce heavy decks by sacrificing things before the spells resolve. Against aggro decks you may get into such a board state that the enemy can't even attack you without killing themselves. Overall it's a fun deck to play, not particularly powerful, but occasionally punches well above it's weight and it is capable of going toe to toe with much more expensive and popular decks. I'm always looking for suggestions to improve the deck however so feel free to drop any ideas you might have.
Here's a breakdown of how each individual card fits into the deck.
Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat: These creatures form the core of the deck, ideally the deck wants at least two of them in play to pull off the win.
Bile Urchin/Death Cultist: These creatures are able to sacrifice themselves to cause some minor life loss, but more importantly trigger the Blood Artist and Cutthroats ability.
Bloodthrone Vampire/Viscera Seer: These two cards enable the sacrificing of creatures that can't sacrifice themselves, such as the Blood Artist and Cutthroat. The vampire may also be used to deliver a crushing finishing blow in the right situations although it's not to be relied upon, and the Seer can help get to the cards you need.
Hangarback Walker: The newest addition to the deck. For two mana, it's two creatures in one, triggering the Blood Artist and Cutthroat's ability twice. If it doesn't immediately get nuked off the board, it can keep stacking counters for even more thopter tokens when it dies. Hangarback Walker should never be attacking, if the opponent doesn't immediately remove it, it should always be using its T ability.
Pawn of Ulamog: Can generate self sacrificing tokens. At 3 mana it's the most expensive creature in the deck, but can almost double the amount of damage done by Blood Artist and Cutthroat. I was trying to decide between this and Bitterblossom and to be honest I still haven't decided which works better for me. However the Pawn is much cheaper and so it's a good starting point. A top deck Pawn also has the potential to win games for me where as Bitterblossom needs to be in play early to be effective.
Demon of Death's Gate: Okay I lied, THIS is technically the most expensive creature in the deck, but it will almost always be cast for it's alternate cost. In a pinch it can be used to sacrifice creatures that can't do it themselves, but mostly it's here as a backup win condition. The 6 life loss isn't that bad considering the deck tends to incidentally gain life while dealing damage.
Sign in Blood: Card acceleration, I used to have Dark tutelage in the deck but it became to risky with the Demon of Death's Gate floating around. Sign in blood only costs 2 instead of 3 and will draw 2 cards immediately instead of 1 per turn so it does have some advantages over Dark Tutelage. I chose it over Night's whisper because the deck exclusively generates black mana (not counting the eldrazi drones) and Sign in Blood can be used on an opponent should you top deck it while they're only on one or two life.
Murderous Cut/Dismember: obligatory creature removal. Murderous cut almost always gets cast for 1 or 2 since the graveyard fills up quickly and it has no restrictions about what creatures it can destroy and dismember can be used to reach out and touch indestructible creatures.
Swamp: They smell. Also they come into play untapped and generate exclusively black mana making them the best choice that I've seen so far for this high tempo deck that only has two spells that will ever use generic mana. You might think 19 is really stretching it, but it gets the job done most of the time, and allows for a library full of creatures.
Sideboard: I haven't decided on a sideboard yet. One thing I will have in there however is Ratchet Bomb, specifically to destroy Chalice of the Void, which I learned the hard way, completely shuts down my deck full of 1 and 2 cost creatures. I'll likely throw in more creature removal as well. Any suggestions are appreciated.
