Abzan-Gates Tortured Existence

If you want to play a Golgari-based graveyard deck in Pauper, just go play Dread Return Dredge. Tortured Exsitence was my favorite deck in the format for the longest time, and I had some on and off decent success with it until late 2019.

The speed of the format, the rising powerlevel of individual cards, the ability of control decks that once lost to you by default to suddenly beat you, the ease of access to enchantment and graveyard removal, all of these things have pushed Tortured Existence decks out of the fringes and straight into non-existence.

This is I think the most viable build of the deck nowadays. I say this because the deck:
A) can play without a TE in play as a mediocre but capable midrange deck thanks to Skyfishers and Sacred Cats combined with the gates.
B) The deck is still a beast in long games, thanks to Grave Scrabbler and the gates package (without Grave Scrabbler, the endgame always boils down to drawing the best creature in your graveyard every turn, which is not good enough anymore when games go long.)
C) It packs enough lifegain to survive the metagame, even if it is utterly unable to thrive in it.

However, the high gate count means the deck is as durdly and slow as it has ever been, it's gameplan can still fall apart with ease as it possesses neither speed nor unmatched resilience in the late game.

It's like you are playing a worse version of Caw Gates, Familiars, and Golgari Dredge. You aim to survive until a boardstate in which you can threaten inevitability with gates or a Tortured Existence and the value it generates, in the form of bodies or life or lands or all of the above.

• Pauper
• abzan
• Trotured Existence
• Control
• Graveyard
• Attrition
• Midrange