After the great results I have received by playing my first brew The Rock, Pauper, Scissors I have decided to build myself a more aggressive brew, one that could shift between playstyles (but nothing too drastic, otherwise the deck wouldn't be playable). So this is an attempt to build something in between an aggro deck and a more tempo/fast midrange deck. The deck relies on low costed creatures to swarm the board early, while also counting with many creatures that are resilient (either come back from the graveyard, leave a body behind or simply has a relevant death trigger) in order to force our opponents to make bad trades.
The deck started as a mono black ETB but it was way too slow in some cases and lost pretty hard to Burn, that's why I settled on the current list.
So the deck can grind with other grindy decks as well as trade with other aggro decks and beat up control decks at a reasonable pace. Don't get me wrong, the deck isn't the next tier 0 of the format, all I'm saying is that it's a good brew to bring to FNM and get a good result. Just like the Rock, Pauper, Scissors (RPS) I'm playing with my favorite color pairing (Golgari) to get the good interaction cards from black as well as Bayou Groff, Rancor, and noncreature hate from green.
TL;DR This is a cheap deck to build that can be fun and somewhat competitive.
Last Update: 05/25/2022
Mainboard
Creatures
Ecstatic Awakener
: A fodder for the sacrifice archetype that can become a bomb in the late game while also drawing us cards;
Shambling Ghast: A worse version of Young Wolf, that instead of generating another creature it can ramp or deal with a small creature. Not great but definitely not bad;
Young Wolf: This card fits in the deck like a glove, because it's resilient to removal, it's a great sac target and it can also become a sizeable creature for one mana, allowing the infamous turn two seven power on the board with Bayou Groff;
Bayou Groff: This card was difficult to choose against a Gurmag Angler but once I saw the payoff I decided on playing this instead of the fish. The sacrifice trigger to cast it can be very useful to burn someone down with Serrated Scorpion or to upgrade our Young Wolf or Brindle Shoat;
Brindle Shoat: A card that's usually used aggressively in aggro decks here it has more of a midrange purpose. It's a target for Village Rites, Bayou Groff and Fleshbag Marauder to generate good value, as well as being able to take two removal spells from the opponent;
Putrid Leech: A bonus aggressive pick to keep a healthy amount of threats in the deck, plus it survives some types of removal;
Bone Picker: One of the most versatile cards of the deck, it drops usually for one mana, offers a sizeable body and can block anything without first strike and kill it.
Enchantments
Rancor: A quintessential part of the aggro metagame. Four of would be too much due to the green mana cost and the lack of a more proactive aggro plan, but still necessary because it can close some games.
Sorceries
Innocent Blood: A sacrifice spell that most times can benefit us;
Unearth: A way to reuse ETB's or to simply get back a big beater.
Instants
Village Rites: A great card in the deck because it allows us to cast Bone Picker for one mana, helps us to reutilize ETB's as well as making amazing trades against removal. A Village Rites on a Cantrip Creature against a removal can literally turn the tables to our favor. I only play two copies maindeck because it's not that great against fast aggro, where it's more important to have creatures on the board than cards in our hands (unless the cards in our hand will help us remove more than one creature at once);
Cast Down: The generic answer to anything in pauper that can be targeted with it;
Sideboard
Relic of Progenitus: Since we have no graveyard interaction this simply becomes an obvious choice since it controls the graveyard very well;
Duress: The obligatory Duress copies because we're playing black. It's also very good to remove troublesome cards from our opponent's hands but the best use for it is to take out boardwipes from our opponents;
Innocent Blood: Our edict of choice, because with the amount of death triggers we have this is a viable option to deal with creature dropping on turn one;
Unexpected Fangs: A way to gain life while taking advantage of our big creatures;
Suffocating Fumes: The mandatory copies because they're always useful and can always be cycled if needed;
Natural State: Cheap removal against some types of artifacts and enchantments. It hits almost everything enchantment/artifact related in pauper, with the biggest exception being the artifact duals.
