This is my first serious deck build. It is a take on The most fun I've ever had playing Magic after a few revisions.
Strategy
Early Game
Hedron Crab and Armored Skaab should be played as early as possible, as these get some initial cards into your graveyard, and hopefully some useful cards with dredge and flashback. If either of these cards is not in your opening hand, you should highly consider a mulligan.
The dredge mechanic rule states "if you would draw a card, you may instead mill N cards and return this card from your graveyard to your hand." Point being, you can dredge more than once per turn. Casting of Bones, Cephalid Coliseum, and Grim Backwoods allow additional card draw and can be used to activate the dredge mechanic, putting many cards into the graveyard early to mid-game. In this way, the deck can "ramp" more quickly by beefing up creatures like Splinterfright and getting access to more spells through flashback or dredge.
Middle/End Game
Splinterfright, Fiend Artisan, and Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord are the beefy, game ending creatures whose power and toughness are equal to the number of cards in your graveyard. The main win strategy is dredging creatures into the graveyard quickly, and dealing direct damage with these creatures and Artful Dodge. Fiend Artisan, Golgari Thug, and Mortuary Mire have mechanisms to retrieve these creatures from your library or graveyard, respectively. Golgari Grave-Troll has a similar mechanism and also has dredge 6 which is advantageous. Kessig Cagebreakers can be used to create sacrificial creatures for Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord or Fiend Artisan's abilities, or for blocking.
Gnaw to the Bone is a really effective life gain strategy if you are getting low on life, and can at times be demoralizing to your opponent due to its flashback ability.
Interesting Synergy
When Golgari Thug is enchanted with Casting of Bones and is put into a graveyard, you can choose a creature to put from your graveyard on top of your library which you may then draw.
Skyline Cascade can be used to take care of annoying creatures your opponent controls. Golgari Rot Farm can be used to return Skyline Cascade to your hand so it can be re-played and its ability can be triggered again. I am considering adding replacing dual tap lands with basic lands so that this mechanic doesn't freeze up too much mana.
Things I kept in mind when building this deck:
1.) I tried to only use cards with dredge or flashback, where possible. This way most cards in the graveyard are accessible.
2.) I got kind of creative with lands - many lands have abilities that have synergy with the deck, and once a significant portion in the deck is in the graveyard Life from the Loam can be used to access these abilities when convenient.
