Golgari Munchies (Pauper)

Elevator Pitch: Golgari Munchies is an Aristocrat-style Pauper deck that plays low-cost, ‘multiple-body’ creatures and spells to feed instant-speed ‘free eaters’, like Carrion Feeder and Bloodthrone Vampire.

My weekly gaming group has been playing Pauper Commander for the past few weeks, and the idea was recently floated to try out 60-card Pauper and hold our own mini-tournament. Being fairly new to Pauper in general, I headed over to MTGGoldfish to check out decklists/watch videos of decks being played on MTGO. I quickly focused on a Golgari Aristocrats build that suited my personal playstyle.

I started off by modifying the decklist highlighted by Jake Stiles on his 15 February 2017 ‘Playing Pauper’ post (see link below). For creatures, I cut one Bloodthrone Vampire and all four copies of Brindle Shoat and replaced them with two copies of Deathspore Thallid and two copies of Mortician Beetle. For spells, I cut both copies of Read the Bones, two copies of Tragic Slip, and two copies of Unearth. I replaced them with four copies of Saproling Migration and two copies of Fungal Infection. I also replaced the sole copy of Bonesplitter with two copies of Flayer Husk.

My modifications emphasized saproling production, with the addition of Deathspore Thallid and Saproling Migration. Deathspore Thallid slowly creates more saprolings, a helpful ability against control decks or games that go long, and has the ever helpful ability to instantly sacrifice a saproling to give a creature -1/-1 until end of turn. This not only helps cover the deck’s most glaring weakness- lack of flyers/reach- but it also provides excellent flexibility in terms of using saprolings to block attackers, and then sacrificing them to Deathspore Thallid to give another creature -1/-1. It makes battle math for your opponent just that much more difficult.

Saproling Migration provides solid value, with a 2 CMC generating two saprolings, but gets even more impressive if you manage to pay the kicker cost as well. Even though the deck runs only 19 lands, the fact that Blisterpod and Nest Invader both produce Eldrazi Drone tokens that can be sacrificed for colorless mana allows you to more reliably cast a kicked Saproling Migration. At first, I wasn’t sure the kicker ability would be actually useful/playable. But experience has shown that a mid-game kicked Migration can really tilt the game in your favor.

I really like Tragic Slip in this deck, but decided to cut two copies of the card in favor of Fungal Infection. Fungal Infection has one big advantage over Tragic Slip; it makes a saproling token at instant speed. While its top end isn’t as good as the -13/-13 Tragic Slip provides, Fungal Infection still provides a lot of value as the -1/-1 kills an unflipped Delver of Secrets and the ability to instantly make a saproling means your free eaters can spring a nasty trap on offense or defense. Tragic Slip is still the king of taking out big threats, but I found Fungal Infection to be just as good and, sometimes, even better thanks to the uncertainty it creates for your opponent.

My other substitutions, the Mortician Beetle and Flayer Husk, work nicely with the rest of the deck. Mortician Beetle gets bigger with every creature you sacrifice, and even if you don’t have a free eater out to act as a sac outlet, you can sacrifice your Eldrazi Drone tokens to pump it up with +1/+1 counters in a pinch. Anytime I draw a Beetle + Carrion Feeder + multiple body creature/spell, I know I’m off to a good start. Putting in Flayer Husk over Bonesplitter means sacrificing some offensive capability and speed (Husk only gives +1+1 and costs 2 to equip). But in return it provides another body that can be sacrificed, and the +1/+1 over the +2/+0 can actually be more helpful in saving small creatures from cards like Electrickery or other ‘deals 1 damage to all creature’ spells.

One thing I would like to add to this deck is card draw. Sometimes you need just one more ‘multiple body’ creature that can be sacrificed in order to win, and this deck does fall prey to the aggro problem of running out of gas and relying on top-decking for answers. One card that interests me in this regard is Bequeathal, as it fits perfectly with the sacrifice strategy of the deck. Just not sure how what to take out and if it would even be worth the effort.

Comments or suggestions for improvements are welcomed.

Based off the Golgari Aristocrats decklist found at MTGGoldfish:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/playing-pauper-golgari-aristocrats