Golgari Death-Tithe

A black-green attrition deck that strips the opponent's hand, sacrifices its own creatures for value, and grinds out a medium-speed win through graveyard recursion and incremental drain.

Deep-Cavern Bat + Duress + Mourner's Surprise — three layers of disruption and recovery. Duress clears the opponent's best noncreature answer on turn one, Deep-Cavern Bat exiles a key card while leaving a flying blocker behind, and Mourner's Surprise buys a creature back from the graveyard. Trading a creature early is never a real loss, because the graveyard is effectively your second hand.

Corrupted Conviction + Greedy Freebooter + Fear of Lost Teeth — every creature you sacrifice pays you twice. Corrupted Conviction turns any spare body into two fresh cards, Greedy Freebooter scries and leaves a Treasure behind when it dies, and Fear of Lost Teeth drains the opponent and gains you life on the way out. Sacrifice, death, and discard all become value instead of card disadvantage.

Poison Dart Frog + Rottenmouth Viper — the Frog is a two-mana deathtouch/reach body that also taps for any color, fixing your mana while trading up against bigger attackers. Once you have spare Treasures, spare tokens, and spare bodies, Rottenmouth Viper eats them to cost less and hits the board as a massive threat with a big drain swing.

Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber — the slow engine that ties the deck together. It keeps generating Demon tokens and draining the opponent each turn, giving the deck a way to win long games without ever needing a dedicated bomb.

Keep any hand with 2-4 lands, at least one one- or two-mana play, and at least one discard or removal spell. A hand of Swamp + Forest + Duress + Deep-Cavern Bat is a snap keep. Mulligan one-land hands, five-plus-land hands, and hands with no interaction and no early creature. Because this deck trades resources constantly, it needs a functional curve far more than it needs any specific rare.

Early (turns 1-3): Lead with Duress or Greedy Freebooter, then develop Deep-Cavern Bat or Poison Dart Frog on turn two. The Bat strips their best remaining card and chips in with evasion; the Frog fixes your colors and threatens to trade with anything on defense. Hold Bitter Triumph for something that actually threatens to kill you — you often want to pay the 3 life rather than discard a card you still need.

Mid (turns 4-6): Land Unholy Annex // Ritual Chamber and start generating Demon tokens. Attack with the Bat and the Demons, and use Corrupted Conviction, Greedy Freebooter, and Fear of Lost Teeth to keep your hand full while draining the opponent. Mourner's Surprise keeps returning your best creature so you never run out of bodies to sacrifice or block with.

Late (turn 7+): Cast Rottenmouth Viper, sacrificing Treasures, Demon tokens, and leftover creatures to reduce its cost and put a huge attacker on the board. Between Viper attacks, Demon tokens, Mourner's Surprise, and Fear of Lost Teeth drains, the opponent usually dies to a mix of combat damage and incremental life loss. This is a grind deck, so expect to win around turns 8-10 rather than turns 4-5.

Graveyard hate and hand-attack hate — Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, or a well-timed discard mirror can shut off Mourner's Surprise and your recursion plan. Board wipes like Sunfall and Temporary Lockdown punish a creature-heavy board, so hold one threat back and bait the sweeper with tokens and Bats first. Fast aggro decks can outrace you before Unholy Annex and your drain effects take over, so prioritize Bitter Triumph and efficient blocks in those matchups. Finally, the mana base is all basic lands, so it can occasionally stumble on double-black or double-green costs — leaning on Poison Dart Frog and Greedy Freebooter's Treasure to smooth out color requirements is important.