The original idea was to make a deck that could hit behind the opponent without them being able to really do anything about it. They can put up as many walls as they like, but you are dealing direct damage.
Take a good hard look in the mirror. Do you want to be a bad person? Are you a bad person? Perhaps this deck is for you.
The main mechanic of the deck was, originally, to play down Tenacious D and constantly sacrifice him in order to do a variety of things:
Sacrificing Tenacious D and bringing him back with his ability could be used to:
-Add several +2/+2 Counters on Blood Bairn
-Be used to add additional health with Bubbling Cauldron
-Can be used as a sacrifice for a different card requiring one
This is aided by Staff of the Death Magus.
+If you get one or more Staffs down, you are suddenly pulling in a lot of life!
For each swamp and spell cast you get +1 for each Staff down. This hinders the
opponent. Note their facial reactions.
Bubbling Cauldron, as it stands, is completely unnecessary to the main deck, but it does allow you to gain some life with Tenacious D and offers a possible side path. The main reason it is included is because it gives some flexibility and because you can sideboard in Festering Newts to do more behind the wall damage if people are giving you trouble.
As I said, this was the main purpose...
The deck evolved however into something even crueler... The breakthrough came when I discovered the card Crypt Ghast. It allows you to, essentially, use your mana pool twice. Ramp that mana! So if I have two swamps down, it is as if I have four. Excellent. This means we can sacrifice more Tenacious D's! But then I found another card...
Pack Rat has */* and his toughness and power is determined by the number of Rats in your control. However, his ability allows you to summon more Pack Rat creatures. He works fast. It can be used for the chain I explain next, or just as a Zerg Rush. If you draw into two Pack Rats and three Swamps- they will be hard pressed to fight against the Rat horde.
Theoretically, if you drew into Crypt Ghast, Two Pack Rats, and Swamps...
You could, by Turn 5, have out four 4/4 Rats and Crypt Ghost with the potential to create 8 8/8 Pack Rats next turn. Not only is this devastating, but if you drew into Gray Merchant... <3 that devotion.
But it gets better:
Now the beauty of this is the card Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Not only is it dirt cheap, but your opponent loses X life and you gain X life, where X is your devotion to black. If you can funnel through Pack Rat a few times, not only do you have a pack of super powerful creatures- but your opponent has already lost.
Mix this with the aforementioned Crypt Ghast to cycle your mana, and you have a deadly combo.
The sideboard:
Guardian of the Ages &
March of the Returned: In case they have a deck that blocks your chain over and over with counter spells.
Devour Flesh: For those decks with creatures that have protection from black
Festering Newt: Revive the original mechanic. Seems unnecessary but can be good if building the Gray Merchant is difficult.
Immortal Servitude: Imagine all your Festering Newts and Tenacious D's are in the graveyard. BAM, suddenly there are 8 creatures out of the field. Talk about devotion. For the mere cost of four (and with Crypt Ghast), this seems incredible. But most of the creatures do not have the same mana cost. Most would cost more then four mana. Plus, in how many situations will they all be in the graveyard. This was better when you could sacrifice the Festering Newts- but since you can only sacrifice one a turn anyways it seems rather pointless. I could not dream up many situations where this would come in handy, but there was still a few.
Possible improvements:
-Add some draw power for more cards to get rid of! For instance, Altar's Reap. In fact, while writing this I realized that is probably a much better card due to it's "synergy" with Tenacious D. It needs a sacrifice in order to use it- then you draw two cards.
Other options include
+Cremate. Exile target card from a graveyard and Draw a card.
-There are a lot of cards to bring monsters back from the grave.
I had trouble deciding which to sideboard:
-Corpse Hauler
+ The issue with Corpse Hauler was that he was a creature. While it did increase
devotion to black and you could use the ability many times, it seemed to
inefficient. Why take two turns with something that should take one?
-Grim Return
+ The problem was that Grim Return worked like Tenacious D's death ability- it had to
be the turn of.
-March of The Returned
+ I settled on this one because it simply brings back two creatures into your hand.
-Midnight Recovery (Cipher)
+ I originally had Midnight Recovery. Everytime you attack you can reuse the spell.
But since my creatures are made to sacrifice and the idea is to hit behind the wall
without necessarily attacking (unless you get an infestation of Pack Rats) then it
didn't seem totally worth it. If it was EVERY time the creature attacked, but it is
whenever a creature DEALS DAMAGE to the PLAYER. And that wasn't convenient.
-I question the necessity of Whip of Erebos. Although it gives everything lifelink (which is really good with Pack Rat) and also allows to return a creature temporarily (in which you could stack a shitton of damage with Blood Bairn with Haste) it is also one of the more expensive Cards. Perhaps only two? The main issue with this deck is expensive: Pack Rat is a lot and so is Crypt Ghast. On the low end it isn't so bad- considering I have the majority of the cards.
-There was one more "major" dilema and that was the token generator card. I settled on Beckon Apparition over Vile Rebirth.
+ Vile Rebirth requires you to exile a creature from the graveyard. This is against
everything I believe in. However it is a 2/2 zombie (more devotion and better).
+ Beckon Apparition only summons a 1/1 but you can exile ANY card from graveyard,
not just creatures.
-Other cool cards I considered were:
+Crypt Incursion- exile all creature cards from target player's Graveyard. Gain 3 life for
each. Doesn't exactly help (notably, at all) but I just liked imagining the faces of the people if it worked out.
+ Away (Far/Away) instead of Devour Flesh. Although it costs one more mana, the user
does not gain life like with Devour Flesh.
+ Perhaps get rid of BloodB/TenD's and put in the aforementioned draw power cards.
-Taste yourself