A creature-based Pestilence Abzan midrange deck, built to leverage what is arguably Pauper’s strongest colour combination for grinding games to a halt. The deck focuses on stabilizing early, denying combat, and slowly converting life gain and inevitability into a win through Pestilence.
Creatures:
The creature suite is primarily white, providing access to lifelink, repeatable blockers, and efficient ETB value. Cards like Sacred Cat, Squadron Hawk, Lone Missionary, and Raffine's Informant help stabilize the board while padding life totals and maintaining card flow.
Black creatures play a more supportive role, reinforcing the deck’s central axis: Pestilence. Thorn of the Black Rose provides monarch/good blocker in stalled board states, while Troll of Khazad-dum doubles as mana smoothing early and a resilient late-game threat.
Interaction:
Interaction is largely preventative rather than reactive instants, built around fog effects and attrition. Prismatic Strands is the cornerstone, made especially powerful by the deck’s high density of white creatures and recursive bodies. Moment's Peace supplements this plan by buying critical time against aggressive or go-wide strategies.
Tithing Blade
offers scalable removal that pressures opposing boards early and becomes a repeatable source of advantage in longer, grindier games. Light recursion via Pulse of Murasa helps rebuy key creatures while simultaneously buffering life totals to keep Pestilence active.
Winning:
The primary win condition is Pestilence itself — controlling the board, constraining creature-based strategies, and eventually draining the opponent out while maintaining a higher life total through repeated lifegain effects.
A secondary path to victory comes from Troll of Khazad-dum. Cycling it early helps fix mana and stock the graveyard, while Pulse of Murasa allows it to be returned and hard-cast later as a large, difficult-to-answer threat that closes games once control has been established.
I hope this deck gives you some good and grindy games! Suggestions are welcome :)
