Black Sacrifice Matchups - MTG Pauper Matchup Guide

Introduction

Black Sacrifice is a mono-black creature deck that occupies a small but steady corner of the Pauper field, at 0.9% of the metagame. It plays a swarm of one-mana creatures that are worth more dead than alive, feeds them to Carrion Feeder and Bloodthrone Vampire to build an oversized attacker, cashes the leftovers in for cards with Village Rites, and closes with one big swing followed by a Rite of Consumption drain. The deck has kept putting up results this season: EntroPete made the Top 8 of the July 26 Pauper Challenge in 5th, msales and EntroPete both went 6-3 at the Pauper RC Super Qualifier on September 20, and two copies posted 5-0 League runs on September 16, with further copies placing in the Challenge series through the summer.

The deck beats control and ramp decks that answer threats one at a time, because a kill spell aimed at a creature that leaves a token behind, or that gets sacrificed for value in response, rarely trades cleanly, and a slow deck without a cheap sweeper has to deal with the swarm one body at a time while the payoffs grow. It is favored against Gruul Ponza, Golgari Gardens, Gruul Ramp, Jeskai Ephemerate, Flicker Tron and Familiars, and slightly favored against Dimir Faeries.

It struggles against aggressive decks that race a board of fragile creatures with cheap damage before the payoffs grow out of range, and against midrange decks whose sweepers and solid blockers wall off a ground attack. It is unfavored against Mono Red Madness, Blue Terror, Mono Blue Faeries, Jund Wildfire, Grixis Affinity, White Aggro and Madness Burn, and slightly unfavored against Mono Red Rally.

General Strategy

Black Sacrifice wants to put a creature onto the battlefield every turn from the first one, then spend the rest of the game killing its own creatures on purpose. Every death is a resource: Nested Shambler, Infestation Sage and Nezumi Linkbreaker each leave a token behind, Carrion Feeder grows with every creature it eats, Mortician Beetle grows with every sacrifice, and Village Rites turns a spare body into cards. The single most important thing to do is keep the payoffs fed: get a growth creature onto the battlefield early, surround it with expendable bodies, and sacrifice those bodies at the moment it does the most (usually mid-combat, after the opponent has committed to blocks), so the attack lands with an oversized creature and the board rebuilds itself from the tokens the deaths leave behind. The finish is a large attack followed by Rite of Consumption, which sacrifices the biggest creature to drain whatever life is left.

The engine is a loop of cheap fodder and free outlets. Nested Shambler, Infestation Sage and Nezumi Linkbreaker are the fodder: each costs one mana and replaces itself with a token when it dies, so sacrificing one almost never shrinks the board. Carrion Feeder and Bloodthrone Vampire are the outlets, both free to activate at instant speed: Carrion Feeder keeps a permanent +1/+1 counter for every creature it eats, while Bloodthrone Vampire converts each body into +2/+2 for the turn. Mortician Beetle grows whenever either player sacrifices a creature, and Sadistic Glee grows whichever creature it enchants whenever any creature dies, so with both on the battlefield a single sacrifice can add multiple counters across the board. is the outlet that turns a body into two cards instead of power, and and bring the bodies back so they can die a second time.

The Cards

Carrion Feeder

The signature card and the best one-mana play the deck has. It is a free sacrifice outlet that keeps a permanent +1/+1 counter for every creature it eats, so a single body fed to it is worth a point of power every turn for the rest of the game. Its drawback is that it can't block, which means it is purely an attacker: never count it in a defensive plan, and against a fast opponent your blockers are Mortician Beetle, Bloodthrone Vampire and the fodder. Because the ability is instant speed, the feeding happens after blockers are declared, so the opponent is always choosing blocks against a creature smaller than the one that deals damage.

Mortician Beetle

The second growth payoff, and the one that grows without doing any work itself: it puts on a counter whenever any player sacrifices a creature, including sacrifices made to pay for Village Rites, Rite of Consumption, Carrion Feeder and Bloodthrone Vampire, and including both halves of an Accursed Marauder trigger. Note that it only counts sacrifices, not deaths: a creature killed in combat or by removal that doesn't make its controller sacrifice it does nothing for it. Unlike Carrion Feeder it can block, so it is the growth creature you keep home when you need a wall that keeps getting bigger.

Bloodthrone Vampire

The burst outlet. Each creature fed to it is +2/+2 until end of turn, which turns a handful of 1/1 tokens into a lethal attacker out of nowhere, and the pump lands at instant speed after blocks. Two details matter when feeding it mid-combat: an attacking creature sacrificed during the declare blockers step deals no combat damage, so feed it the tokens that stayed home and the attackers that are already blocked by something bigger, and if you wait until combat damage to sacrifice a creature that is taking lethal damage, it dies before you get the chance. The temporary pump also makes it the best creature to hand to once it has already attacked.

Role Assignment

Black Sacrifice is a linear, tempo-positive aggro deck with low inevitability: its curve ends at two mana, its interaction is thin (the edict on Accursed Marauder and the -1/-1 death trigger on Shambling Ghast in the mainboard, with Tragic Slip and Drown in Sorrow waiting in the sideboard), and it does not win a long game against a deck that draws extra cards and answers threats one at a time. That makes it the beatdown in most matchups by default. Every matchup is fought along the same four axes: whether the opponent has a cheap sweeper for a board of 1-toughness creatures, how much value their targeted removal loses against death triggers and instant-speed sacrifice, whether they can close before Carrion Feeder and Mortician Beetle grow out of range, and whether blocking and trading is even worth it for them when many of our deaths leave something behind.

Vs. Aggro. Against a faster aggressive deck you are the control player for the first few turns, and pretending otherwise loses races. The opponent's clock is front-loaded while ours is back-loaded, so the early turns go to trading and chump-blocking with the fodder, which is close to free: Infestation Sage blocks, dies, and leaves an untapped Insect to block again, while Mortician Beetle and Bloodthrone Vampire hold the ground, since Carrion Feeder cannot block and only ever attacks. The role flips once a payoff is large enough to attack through their board, and Rite of Consumption on that grown creature is the play that shows the stance: it deals its power to the opponent and gains you the same amount, which is often a bigger swing than any attack.

Vs. Midrange. You are the beatdown, but against the class most likely to hold a sweeper and solid blockers, so the pressure has to be shaped around the sweeper-access axis. Deploy enough creatures to force action, hold the rest, and keep the payoffs growing so they survive the small sweepers that clear 1/1s: a Carrion Feeder with two counters lives through a 2-damage sweep, and eating a token in response to one comes out the other side as a 3/3. The demonstrating play is to answer a sweeper on the stack by feeding the fodder to the outlets so the payoffs survive.

Play Patterns

When removal targets one of your creatures, sacrifice that creature to an outlet in response. The creature was dying either way, so the only question is who gets paid for the death. Feeding it to Carrion Feeder banks a permanent counter, feeding it to Bloodthrone Vampire banks a pump, and Village Rites banks two cards, all while any death trigger fires as normal. The removal spell then has no legal target left and is removed from the stack without doing anything, so the opponent spent a card for nothing. Letting the spell resolve hands them the clean one-for-one exchange this deck is built to deny.
Attack with the creature you plan to feed to Rite of Consumption, then cast it in your second main phase. Pumps last until end of turn and counters are permanent, so a creature that connects in combat and is then sacrificed after combat has its full power counted twice, once as combat damage and once as the drain. Casting the drain before combat throws away the free attack. With Carrion Feeder, Mortician Beetle, Nested Shambler and Bloodthrone Vampire on the battlefield against an empty board, attack with all four and wait for the declare blockers step. Feed the Shambler to the Vampire, then the Squirrel it leaves behind, then the Feeder: the Vampire is a 7/7, the Beetle has grown to a 4/4 off the three sacrifices, and the swing deals 11. Rite of Consumption in the second main phase then sacrifices the 7/7 Vampire for 7 more, so the same creature has produced 14 damage on the turn.
Resolve Mortician Beetle and Sadistic Glee before casting your sacrifice and forced-sacrifice effects, not after. Both growth triggers only see deaths that happen while they are already on the battlefield. An Accursed Marauder cast with the Beetle in play grows it off both players' sacrifices, two counters from one card, and the Glee adds a counter for each of those two deaths as well. Cast the Marauder first and both of those triggers are wasted. The same ordering applies to every outlet: on a turn where you plan to sacrifice, the payoff comes down before the first body is spent. It is also what makes on work: with the Feeder down on turn one and the Glee attached on turn two alongside an , the turn-three attack feeds the Sage and then its Insect to the Feeder after blockers are declared, four counters from two bodies, and the 1/1 the opponent saw at declare attackers deals damage as a 5/5.

Black Sacrifice (Mirror)

Carrion Feeder - emblematic card for this matchup

Matchup - Even

The mirror is a standoff between two boards of 1-toughness creatures, most of which leave a token or a trigger behind when they die, so attacking with a creature that has not grown trades evenly at best and neither player can simply play out a hand and swing. The attacking role goes to whoever first grows a Mortician Beetle or Carrion Feeder out of reach of the other side’s Shambling Ghast trigger, the removal both Game 1 decks lean on, since Accursed Marauder’s edict on either side lets the victim hand over a fodder creature instead. Once a payoff is out of reach it attacks, and then it feeds Rite of Consumption to close. That usually belongs to the player on the play, who lands the first payoff and outlet and makes the other side block first, so take the play; the other player keeps blockers home and saves answers for that one creature.

Land Mortician Beetle before either side starts sacrificing, because from then on it takes a counter from every sacrifice either player makes, including every pump of their Carrion Feeder and every Village Rites they cast. While only they have a Beetle, hold back any sacrifice that does not win a combat or save a creature; each one grows their copy past our Shambling Ghast trigger. Fire that trigger at their Beetle on their turn, or let Ghast die in combat. If we sacrifice Ghast on our own turn, their Beetle’s trigger from that sacrifice resolves before our -1/-1 and the Beetle is a 2/2 by the time it lands. Wait until they cannot sacrifice in response either: no Carrion Feeder or Bloodthrone Vampire with a body to feed it, and no mana open for Village Rites. The same logic protects our side: before committing a payoff, keep a free outlet and a spare body in play, so that a sacrifice in response grows our Feeder or Beetle past their -1/-1.

Attack only with creatures bigger than their best blocker, and block their Carrion Feeder with a Mortician Beetle at least its size, since every creature they feed the Feeder also grows our Beetle. Sacrifice the creature that just connected to Rite of Consumption in the second main phase only when the drain finishes them or decides the race, because that sacrifice also puts a counter on their Beetle. Hold Accursed Marauder until a payoff is their last nontoken creature; while they have fodder, they give up a death-trigger 1/1 instead, and a Shambling Ghast they give up turns into a -1/-1 on one of ours. Their flex slots cut both ways: Snuff Out, maindecked in about a third of their lists, can only hit our green Squirrel and red Mercenary tokens, while the lists that maindeck Tragic Slip hold a one-mana answer to our biggest creature.

Key Threats

Mortician Beetle is the card to kill before we start sacrificing bodies. Their copy turns every sacrifice we make into a counter for them: Carrion Feeder pumps, Village Rites, Rite of Consumption, even the sacrifice that fires our Shambling Ghast. If we sacrifice freely while it sits on their side, each pump or Village Rites grows it out of reach of our Ghast trigger, until it is a blocker our Feeder cannot outgrow by sacrificing.

Shambling Ghast’s -1/-1 trigger is the removal they rely on in Game 1, aimed at whichever of our Carrion Feeder or Mortician Beetle is still a 1/1. Fired on our turn, it resolves before our Beetle’s counter from their own sacrifice, so the Beetle survives only if we sacrifice something in response. Never tap out for a lone Feeder or Beetle with nothing to sacrifice in response; they pick it off before it ever grows.

Carrion Feeder cannot block, so it is the creature they attack our board of 1/1s with and the likely sacrifice for their Rite of Consumption finish. Do not aim Shambling Ghast’s -1/-1 at it while they have a body to feed it: they sacrifice in response, keep the Feeder with an extra counter, and collect the sacrificed creature’s death trigger on top. Block it with a Mortician Beetle at least its size instead.

Sadistic Glee, in roughly two thirds of their lists, grows the creature it enchants with every creature that dies on either side, so once it is on a creature our normal 1/1 trades and chump blocks start growing their biggest threat. The best window is while it is being cast: sacrifice Shambling Ghast to an outlet in response and aim the -1/-1 at the Aura’s target while it is a 1/1, and the Aura never resolves unless they grow the target in response.

Sideboard Plan

In:

2 Tragic Slip
2 Rotten Reunion

Out:

2 Accursed Marauder
2 Unearth

Tragic Slip comes in as a one-mana instant answer to their grown Carrion Feeder, Mortician Beetle or Sadistic Glee carrier. A free sacrifice of ours turns on the -13/-13 morbid mode, and any sacrifice they make in response to grow the target turns it on too.

Rotten Reunion comes in to be cast with their Supernatural Stamina return trigger on the stack, or in response to their Unearth, exiling the creature before it comes back. The 2/2 Zombie is a body to feed Carrion Feeder, Village Rites or Rite of Consumption, and flashback makes a second one.

Accursed Marauder goes out because they choose the sacrifice, and with Nested Shambler, Infestation Sage, Nezumi Linkbreaker and Shambling Ghast in their deck they give up a 1/1 that leaves a token behind, or a Ghast whose -1/-1 hits one of our 1/1s, instead of the Carrion Feeder or Mortician Beetle we need gone. Tragic Slip kills the payoff itself.

Unearth goes out because every one of their lists sideboards Rotten Reunion, which exiles its target in response so the spell does nothing and they get a 2/2 Zombie for their outlets. Our own Rotten Reunion takes the slot as a one-mana body that does not depend on our graveyard.

Sideboarding leaves the mirror where it started: both sides add Tragic Slip and Rotten Reunion, so our answers to their payoffs improve about as much as theirs do to ours, even though some of their lists also bring in Drown in Sorrow or Mutagenic Growth.

Post-board Strategy

Both sides add Tragic Slip, and that changes how payoffs survive. Growing a Carrion Feeder or Mortician Beetle by sacrificing in response no longer saves it, because the sacrifice itself turns on the -13/-13 morbid mode. When they aim Slip at our best creature, sacrifice it to Village Rites in response for two cards, or cast Supernatural Stamina so it comes back as a tapped 1/1. Aim our own Slip at their Mortician Beetle before we start sacrificing, or at whatever wears Sadistic Glee; once a creature has died that turn, the target’s size no longer matters.

Hold Rotten Reunion for their Supernatural Stamina return trigger or their Unearth. When the game needs bodies more than an answer, cast it at the end of their turn for a 2/2 to feed our outlets. Every one of their lists sideboards Rotten Reunion as well, so with Unearth out of our deck the return trigger is the main thing it answers on our side; use our Supernatural Stamina mainly as the +2/+0 before a sacrifice rather than as the only protection for a key creature. A Nested Shambler that dies as a 3/1 still leaves three Squirrels even if they exile it before it returns. When Rite of Consumption alone is lethal, cast it before combat: once the creature is sacrificed to pay for it, Tragic Slip can no longer stop the damage.

Lists that carry Drown in Sorrow, a bit under half of them, can wipe every creature with 2 or less toughness on both boards, and they will sacrifice their own doomed creatures to an outlet in response, so do not commit more bodies than the attack needs. In response to it, feed the tokens already on the battlefield to Carrion Feeder until it can survive the -2/-2, and let Nested Shambler, Infestation Sage and Nezumi Linkbreaker die to the sweep so their tokens arrive after it. Mutagenic Growth, in about a third of their lists, is a free +2/+2 that saves a creature from our Shambling Ghast trigger or from a Tragic Slip cast before anything has died, and wins a 1/1 combat; it cannot save a creature from a morbid Slip, so when the target matters, cast Slip after a creature has already died that turn.