Put me together with the bodies of the dead
And I will wait for life and breathe again
- The Misfits
For love of black green, we make sacrifices.
For our sacrifices, we gain power.
We draw cards.
We gain life.
Out of the box, Witherbloom Pestilence commanded by Dina, Essence Brewer looks very, very fun.
We get life gain for ourselves and mass life loss for our opponents.
We get pests, saprolings, eldrazi, zombies, goats, and more.
We get a team of deathtouching, trampling beaters pushing damage to the dome.
If you’re looking for one precon from Strixhaven to leave unchanged for casual battles, Witherbloom Pestilence is a strong contender for your attention.
But, Witherbloom are scientists. We believe perfection dies and is reborn anew.
Even in the face of preconstructed fun perfected, we strive for better.
This budget upgrade will assume our playgroup is friendly to infinite combos without tutors that are hard to assemble and easy to disrupt. If you prefer a build without infinite combos, feel free to ignore the “C-c-c-combo” section and consider removing the Chthonian Nightmare package.
Sacrificial Fodder
Dina, Essence Brewer asks for a body to sacrifice each turn. In return, we get a card, +1/+1 counters, and life. Shambling Ghast, Blisterpod, and Wriggling Grub each provide an initial inexpensive body to sacrifice and leave behind either mana, interaction, or more bodies for future turns. Over the course of a turn cycle, we can sacrifice Wriggling Grub and the two worms to net three cards.
Nested Shambler and Termagant Swarm offer much bigger bodies to sacrifice and a high ceiling of token potential. Nested Shambler is especially nasty when it comes down with Gorma, the Gullet in play after sacrifices have been made. Combined with Dina’s ability to add additional counters, Nested Shambler can quickly produce ten or more squirrels which can be turned into ten or more cards.
Sacrifice Outlets
To feed our sacrificial engines, we will need ways to sacrifice creatures that do not require additional costs. Out of the box, we get Viscera Seer, Umbral Collar Zealot, Woe Strider, and Yahenni, Undying Partisan. Alongside these four, we will add Carrion Feeder, Spawning Pit, and Sadistic Hypnotist.
Carrion Feeder and Spawning pit are excellent options due to their low mana value, allowing us to play sacrificial fodder alongside an outlet and a payoff all at once. With mana generation in place, Spawning Pit will even start putting new tokens into play for us to sacrifice.
Sadistic Hypnotist, by contrast, costs a lot more, but has a strong payoff wrapped into its ability. For each creature we sacrifice, an opponent must discard two cards. So, if we have managed to turn our Nested Shambler into a modest 5/5, we can strip twelve cards from our opponents’ hands around the table while triggering our other sacrifice payoffs.
Disciple of Freyalise is and easy swap for Exotic Orchard to provide a green source and a sacrifice outlet that draws us cards.
Chthonian Nightmare is a juicy budget include for us and has hallmarks of truly busted card. Why this card is still only thirty-eight cents for the base copy is puzzling, but we are going to get our copy now before someone else brings the Nightmare to the MTG card buying population’s attention.
In our deck full of cheap creatures and tokens to sacrifice, Chthonian Nightmare will accrue enough energy to function as a cheaper version of its banned predecessor, Recurring Nightmare.
And cheaper is better.
Consider the following:
We have a Shambling Ghast and a Pawn of Ulamog in play and a Blisterpod in the graveyard. We cast Chthonian Nightmare, gain three energy, return it to our hand, and sacrifice Shambling Ghast to return Blisterpod to play. When we do so, the Ghast creates a treasure token and the Pawn of Ulamog creates an Eldrazi Spawn. We spent two mana, and now we have two mana back in tokens plus two additional energy. We use those tokens to cast Chthonian Nightmare sacrifice the Blisterpod, netting two Eldrazi Spawn, and return Shambling Ghast. Then again, then again, netting two energy each time to start returning bigger threats from our graveyard, and only losing out on colored mana. (Each cycle costs 2bb and we are producing 3b.)
With a little mana filtering, we approach infinite sacrifice and need a way to win.
Pay Offs
Luckily, sacrifice payoffs that are not gated by “once per turn” clauses is a category Wizards is generous with for this precon. Merhcant of Venom, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest, Blightmound, and the aforementioned Pawn of Ulamog all increase our on board presence with each sacrifice. Smothering Abomination and Moldervine Reclamation draw us cards. And, Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat drain our opponents’ life.
To this generous mix, we will add Ravenous Squirrel, which can become a huge body to sacrifice and doubles as a slow sacrifice outlet.
With the large amount of tokens our rebuild will throw around, Nadier’s Nightblade and Mirkwood Bats will finish off the table once our engines are online. Imagine: We cast Tend the Pests and sacrifice our 10/10 nested shambler, creating twenty tokens. Everyone takes twenty damage. We sacrifice the twenty tokens… wait, where’s everyone going?
To get there, let’s get our mana on theme.
Mana
Out of the box, we get Elvish Mystic, Sakura Tribe Elder, Gilded Goose, Springbloom Druid, Cultivate, Awakening Zone, two mana rocks, and a Culling Ritual for combo mana applications. Of these, we are going to give up the Elvish Mystic, Springbloom Druid, and Gilded Goose in favor of mana production that effectively synergizes with our sacrifice themes.
As budget gamers, we are not going to invest in Ashnod’s Altar, Phyrexian Altar, Phyrexian Tower, or even Culling the Weak, though we will admire them from a distance and maybe even make a slightly unfavorable trade one day to get one.
Instead, we pick up Metamorphosis and Transmogrant Altar as ways to sacrifice our creatures for mana, and Sifter of Skulls and Pitiless Plunderer as sacrifice pay offs that provide a mana advantage alongside on-board presence to keep our resources flowing.
Cathodion allows us to invest mana in an early set up turn to then buy back when we are ready to start sacrificing. If we want to lean heavily into a leaner, meaner, combo-heavy version of our budget build, we could also consider Myr Moonvessel here. Or, if we don’t care about budget, Su-Chi.
Remember the Chthonian Nightmare scenario above? With Pitiless Plunderer and Cathodion in place, we are now truly infinite.
Cards
Whether we go for infinite combos or just plain old strong synergies, we are asking our deck for a lot. We will need a 1) a creature to sacrifice, 2) a way to sacrifice, and 3) a reason to sacrifice. If any piece of our three-part engine is disrupted, we will need to replace it in a hurry, or our deck will look pretty foolish.
Luckily for us, Dina, Essence Brewer provides us with some card draw (among her many talents) from the command zone, which should give us a reasonably reliable way to churn through our deck.
In addition to the suite provided by Wizards, we will add Deadly Dispute, Village Rites, and Pitiless Carnage. The dispute and the rites are excellent ways for us to respond to our opponents’ targeted removal spell or to simply sacrifice our own creatures to trigger our value engines. Pitiless Carnage is our moment of big draw. We can set it up for its plot cost early, then, when the time is right, cash it in alongside our squirrels, worms, and eldrazi tokens for a new handful of cards.
C-c-c-combo
Ok, Witherbloom scientists, the code is cracked.
Gorma, the Gullet + Persist Creatures + Sacrifice Outlet = Infinite Sacrifice
What we do with this infinite sacrifice is up to what we draw. Maybe we get an infinitely large Nested Shambler to sacrifice at the end of our last opponent’s turn and overrun the table with infinite squirrels. Maybe Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat will make quick work of the table. Or maybe yet, Pawn of Ulamog will make infinite tokens for us to sacrifice with Pitiless Carnage, causing us to draw infinite cards and lose to decking in our shame of playing infinite combo at a casual table.
But really, this combo is hard to assemble and vulnerable to a single removal spell targeting Gorma, the Gullet, and, as Witherbloom scientists, worthy of inclusion in our build.
To make the combo more reliable, we could consider using Gorma, the Gullet as our commander instead of Dina. But, cards and life lead to greater variance between games and better play experiences, so we will stick to Dina to maximize our expected fun value at the cost of combo potential.
Surgical Cuts
Making cuts from this precon is not easy! So many fun and flavorful things are happening. But, to make room for us to lower the average mana value, lean into token sacrifice, and incorporate fragile combo, surgical cuts must be made.
Most of the cuts here remove the life gain synergy package or remove high mana value cards that we are unlikely to play. The cuts are:
- Bloodghast
- Wight of the Reliquary
- Veinwitch Coven
- Haywire Mite
- Beledros Witherbloom
- Feral Appetite
- Teacher’s Pest
- Awakening Zone
- Dina, Soul Steeper
- Gyome, Master Chef
- Trudge Garden
- E-lvish Mystic
- Deadly Brew
- Springbloom Druid
- Blossoming Bogbeast
- Gilded Goose
- Mycoloth
- Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia
- Creakwood Liege
- Witherbloom Command
- Night’s Whisper
- Morbid Opportunist
- Tendershoot Dryad
- Ohran Frostfang
- Blossoming Bogbeast
- Exotic Orchard
Cleanup Step
Witherbloom scientists faced with preconstructed fun perfected admire ephemera, knowing decay waits.
By removing life gain synergies and flavorful, thematic pieces, we hastened decay, honing in on harnessed infinite at the sacrifice of broad, wild synergy.
Did we improve the deck? Maybe its win rate. But at the cost of the reciprocal adaptation of Bloodghast and Blossoming Bogbeast.
As always, Table for Four believes in fun, kitchen table Magic among messy practitioners of Witherbloom’s sacrificial science.
