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Tortured Existence

Pauper BG (Golgari)

theages

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Creature (27)

Land (23)

Enchantment (5)

Instant (1)

Sorcery (4)

Sideboard

Creature (12)

Enchantment (2)

Instant (1)

What is this deck ?

This is a deck that revolves around Tortured Existence , which is a very powerful card if built around.

Basically, this deck aims to get endless value by recurring creatures with good ETB effects or good effects that require the creature to die. A prime example of this is Spore Frog which is a Fog on a frog; with Tortured Existence , it becomes a recurrable Fog .

This deck is, in essence, a value deck and as such, it often plays out like a control deck: your goal is often to slow your opponent down as much as possible because the longer the game goes on, the more value you get out of Tortured Existence .

Okay, so how does this work ?

Getting the engine online

The n°1 thing you need to worry about when playing this deck is finding a Tortured Existence . This is why we're running 4 copies, even though they're bad in multiples. On top of that, we're running Commune with the Gods as a 4-of to help find it and fill our graveyard doing so. Vessel of Nascency is mostly there as a fifth copy of Commune with the Gods , but you'll find it's nice that you can find it off of Commune with the Gods and that you can grab lands with it.

Then, what you need to worry about is getting fuel to activate Tortured Existence 's effect. The best way to do that is by putting a Stinkweed Imp or a Golgari Brownscale in the graveyard. Once you've got your namesake card on the board, you don't really care about drawing anything that's not a creature (unless you're stuck on lands) so you can Dredge all day long.

Spinning the Wheels

Once the engine is online, most of your turns should look like this:

  • Draw step: dredge Stinkweed Imp if you're digging for a specific card, dredge Golgari Brownscale if you need the lifegain or if you've already got everything you need in the graveyard; be careful not to self-mill ! You'll often get to 15 cards left in deck with all that dredging !

  • Main phase: discard the creature you dredged to get back Grave Scrabbler , discard Grave Scrabbler and pay its madness cost to get 2 cards back from the graveyard, then sacrifice it to repeat the same thing next turn

  • Combat phase: hit the opponent with a huge Carrion Feeder or Horror of the Broken Lands

Card discussion

This deck is filled with one-ofs, because Tortured Existence combined with a dredger allows you to have as many copies of each creature in your graveyard as you need. The only cards that are in multiples are those essential to the deck:

  • Golgari Brownscale is probably your best dredger in the hostile, aggressive format that pauper is

  • Stinkweed Imp is very good; not only does it dredge 5, it has pseudo-deathtouch, which is non-negligible

  • Crypt Rats is a board wipe; this deck is somewhat slow to get going so the reset button it provides is very much necessary. Furthermore, it can act as a win con because you're guaranteed a somewhat large life buffer thanks to Golgari Brownscale 's life gain

  • Fume Spitter is likely your best early game survival tool: it's a cheap blocker that can leave a -1/-1 counter behind. It's also prenium removal once you get the engine going, often turning into an indestructible Dead Weight

  • Grave Scrabbler is what makes the deck (aside from Tortured Existence , obviously). Without this card, Tortured Existence is still very strong but this allows you to transform its effect into actual card advantage

  • Spore Frog is your very own Moment's Peace ! Except you can Fog your opponent every turn. This means that any creature-based match up is automatically in our favor, as we can just lock them out of dealing any combat damage. This card is an all-star

  • Carrion Feeder and Thoughtpicker Witch ; these are essential to the deck, but they're both one-ofs. Honestly, Thoughtpicker Witch  could be a second Carrion Feeder and vice-versa. They're both here because they allow the deck to put its creatures back into the graveyard once they've hit the battlefield, but they both have useful side effects: Carrion Feeder becomes larger and larger, threatening to kill your opponent while Thoughtpicker Witch allows you to lock your opponent out of drawing any useful card

Now, here are the "toolbox" slots, which are very flexible; if you dislike the choices made here, there are plenty of other good options out there:

  • Augur of Skulls is very good against control, and can provide an infinite blocker against some strategies

  • Gurmag Angler is nice, since we're gonna be filling our graveyard, so it ends up being a cheap 5/5 which is very threatening; you could run more of these but Delving too often is unhealthy for this deck, so I like the one copy. It's also very good when your engine is not yet online

  • Horror of the Broken Lands is your finisher; if it goes through, you can just loop two cards in and out of your graveyard to deal 4 + 2*(black mana). Furthermore, the cycling on it is very good when you're digging for a particular creature: dredge Stinkweed Imp , discard it to get the Horror back, cycle the Horror and dredge the imp again. This line of play allows you to see 10 cards for two black mana

  • Krosan Tusker allows you to get some lands when you want more but need to be dredging every turn (for instance, you need to Spore Frog lock your opponent out or else you're dead)

  • Liliana's Specter makes your opponent drop a card from their hand, which is very relevant as this deck has few ways of actually getting card advantage, but it's also a flying threat. Some people may prefer Chittering Rats over it, but the flying body is very relevant

  • Perilous Myr is your prenium removal and win con with a Carrion Feeder or Thoughtpicker Witch on board

  • Tilling Treefolk allows you to make use of all those lands in your graveyard. It's particularly good with the cycle lands as it basically turns Tilling Treefolk into a Mulldrifter !

  • Faerie Macabre allows you to not auto-lose vs Ghostly Flicker or Ephemerate decks. They can easily out-value you once their engine is online and barring a Crypt Rats , you cannot efficiently interact with them. Faerie Macabre allows you to cut their machinations short.

The only card I have not talked about is Gnaw to the Bone . It's a life saver. Sometimes, it can win you a match all on its own. The amount of life gain a single Gnaw to the Bone represents can be pretty insane if you've been dredging it up for a couple of turns.

Tips and tricks

Here are a few tips and tricks that are useful to know when playing this deck:

  • When playing against something aggressive, it's often correct to spend your whole turn looping a Golgari Brownscale in and out of the graveyard with Tortured Existence : it does represent 2 life every time it goes back to your hand!

  • Dredge carefully early on! You need enough lands for the deck to function and dredging means you're going to put lots of them in the graveyard and not draw them. If you've already got access to a Tilling Treefolk , it's fine but if not, you should only dredge when you really need a creature to discard. You can start dredging to your heart's content once you've got about 5 black mana available. This allows for a couple of Tortured Existence activations, a Grave Scrabbler and another creature.

  • Remember that Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Brownscale are also creatures! If you need a blocker, they're both good at the job

  • Madness can be used to cast Grave Scrabbler at instant speed for a surprise blocker!

  • Hold your Crypt Rats for as long as you can! It will make your opponent not want to play more creatures, so if you can withstand their attacks for a couple more turns, it's definitely worth keeping them on board

  • This is only available post board, but if you have a Mesmeric Fiend in your hand and a sac engine on board, you can cast Mesmeric Fiend , have its trigger on the stack and sack it: this means the opponent won't get their card back

  • Always hold extra Tortured Existence in hand. Most decks will have answers to enchantments post board, but they're often tuned to deal with multiple enchantments at once because of Slippery Bogle decks, so keeping your extras in hand will prevent you from being blown out by those answers. For example, Gleeful Sabotage is a favorite of green decks and Patrician's Scorn is a favorite of white decks. Even in the case of a Nature's Claim , you can still recover easily; Tortured Existence is a very cheap spell

  • You're actually pretty resilient to soft graveyard hate, like Faerie Macabre . If they go for the Faerie Macabre , you can just get the cards they're targeting back to your hand with Tortured Existence . Even if you only have one creature in hand, the targets for Faerie Macabre will no longer be legal, even if they are back in the graveyard before it resolves

  • If possible, against an aggressive creature-based deck that has access to instant speed removal, always have two Spore Frog on board. If they kill your only Spore Frog on your end step, you won't be able to Fog them! Otherwise, be quick to wipe their board so that the Fog effect is a nice plus, but is not necessary

Sideboard discussion

When sideboarding with this deck, here are the cards to look at when deciding what to take out:

  • Bojuka Bog is not really a part of the mana base, so you can sideboard it out if the graveyard hate is irrelevant

  • Augur of Skulls is pretty bad against anything that's not a control deck. I might switch it to the sideboard, but for now, I like it in the main better than some of the other options

  • Grave Scrabbler  can be trimmed against aggressive strategies, as they may not give you the time to go for a Grave Scrabbler turn

  • Golgari Brownscale gets worse vs decks where your life total doesn't matter, so it can be trimmed down

  • Fume Spitter is atrocious if the opponent is running very few creatures

  • Krosan Tusker is a bit slow for some match ups

  • Gnaw to the Bone  can be cut when your life total is not your prime concern

Now, onto the actual sideboard. The sideboard for this deck may look a bit weird because of the nature of the deck. We need to be able to get the cards we're boarding in, so they have to mostly be cards we can get off of Commune with the Gods , Vessel of Nascency , Tortured Existence or cards that can be cast from the graveyard, as we're going to be dredging a lot. This is why we're not running Shrivel and instead are running Death's-Head Buzzard , which meets the first three criteria.

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