This is a budget Athreos deck that is meant to be as strong as possible while still hanging around the $50 mark. There are obvious improvements that can be made for more money (such as improving the mana base) but I wanted to challenge myself to build a powerful EDH deck at this price range.
Taxes
This deck plays around the core theme of taxing your opponents through cards that drain your opponents when other creatures die such as: Bastion of Remembrance, Blood Artist, Corpse Knight, Cruel Celebrant, and Zulaport Cutthroat.
Even if you don't have any of these cards out, there are still plenty more creatures that drain by themselves like: Tattered Mummy, Serrated Scorpion, Nocturnal Feeder, Blistergrub, and Inquisitor Exarch.
But the biggest taxer of all is your commander: Athreos, God of Passage.
Athreos as a Commander
He is the card that makes this deck tick, and you will almost always be casting him on turn 3. With the indestructible keyword, it will be incredibly hard for your opponents to remove him, and his utility allows you to gain card advantage over your opponents. The biggest question that you will have to ask yourself while playing this deck is who to target with Athreos' triggered ability. You will generally want to target the person with the lowest life total, because they will very rarely pay the 3 life. A cool trick with Athreos is that if you have an opponent at or below 3 life, they cannot pay the 3 life so if you choose them your creature will automatically get bounced back to your hand upon death. With a free sacrifice outlet and lots of mana you can get tons of value off of creatures such as War Priest of Thune blowing up all of your opponents' enchantments, Azorius Arrester to detain all of your opponents' creatures, or Dusk Legion Zealot to draw a bunch of cards.
But occasionally, you will want to target the player with the most life or someone who is willing to pay 3 life every time your creatures die. In those cases, you can rely on your taxers and drainers, or you can use some of your big hitters. By big hitters I mean Torgaar, Famine Incarnate to halve your opponent's life total, or Death Pit Offering which sacrifices your whole board and allows your weenies to pack a real punch, or (my personal favorite), Hecatomb which lets you ping down your opponent with extreme ease. Additionally, Hecatomb also lets you target creatures, so you can ping down any creature that causes you problems at instant speed. If you leave your swamps untapped, none of your opponents will want to play anything for fear of their creatures dying instantly.
Sacrifice Outlets
The most important part of this deck are the sacrifice outlets. The three big hitters mentioned previously are some of those sacrifice outlets, but there are many more included in this deck. The best outlets are your free ones: Carrion Feeder, Cartel Aristocrat, Dross Hopper, and Viscera Seer.
Note: This is the part of the deck that I still haven't fully fleshed out yet, and I am currently playtesting to see if this deck can function with only 4 free sac outlets. Additionally, I would normally add other traditional sac outlets such as Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar, and the like, but those cost (relatively) a lot of money, and in an effort to keep the deck as budget as possible, I've decided to forgo those traditional outlets
Instead of free sac outlets like most traditional aristocrats strategies, this deck revolves around sacrificing creatures as additional costs. You are able to cast some very powerful spells at a very cheap cost this way. You can draw at a very low mana cost using Altar's Reap, Bankrupt in Blood, Costly Plunder, or Village Rites. This deck also runs the full suite of ETB sacrifice creatures: Fleshbag Marauder, Merciless Executioner, and Plaguecrafter, all of which also help keep your opponents' fields clear as well. Removal also becomes cheaper this way with Angelic Purge and Bone Splinters.
Other Utility
The final part of this deck that I want to discuss is some of the smaller utility creatures that are incredibly helpful
Kami of False Hope: Spore Frog in white. Having a repeatable fog effect is incredibly useful against decks that want to deal a whole lot of damage to you all at once. Even having this guy on the field will make people not want to attack you.
Alseid of Life's Bounty and Benevolent Bodyguard: Both of these guys offer your creatures protection from any spell that wants to target them. Alseid's ability costs 1 mana so you will need to keep mana open, but it is very worth it to not have to worry about anyone trying to exile Athreos or another one of your important creatures.
Hope of Ghirapur: This is a personal pet card of mine that I really love. This card is incredibly effective at just completely shutting off one player. I try not to use this card in the early game because it just makes the game unfun for the person you are shutting off, but when someone is getting out of control this card really puts them in their place.
Cathodion and Priest of Gix: With a free sacrifice outlet and someone at or below 3 life you can cast these guys infinite times. This can be useful if you have a Pawn of Ulamog on the battlefield or a Liliana's Standard Bearer in hand. These can also catch your opponent's off-guard after a few loops. Nowadays my playgroup sees it coming and pays the 3 life, but at first, I would choose someone with low life and with a Blood Artist on the battlefield and would drain him a few times before he realized that he needed to pay the three life to stop the loop.
Forbidding Spirit: Ghostly Prison on a stick. Incredibly powerful card against decks that go wide, and the recursion that this deck has allows you to keep playing this card to continually prevent your opponents from being able to attack you.
End
There are many other cool interactions and creatures in this deck but I don't want this description to go on too long!! I had a ton of fun brewing up this deck and would love any feedback you all have! I am in a constant process of updating this deck to be the best budget brew it can be. Thanks for checking out my deck :)
