“We have a proud history of self-sacrifice. But it is easy, in these bleak times, to find one among us who is eager to die for any cause”

So says Tavalus, acolyte of Korlis on the card Children of Korlis. The following decktech describes what in my minds is the prototypical style of deck I enjoy creating and playing. The deck runs several different strategies that are married through clever card choice and overlapping support packages. The deck includes toolbox like elements and a clear game plan. While there is a clear pattern in the deck the highly interactive nature of the deck means that every game plays out differently in how you engage with the board. The deck itself at this point is older and I haven’t played it since 2022 but I think it still holds up.

This deck is thus named “Children of Pestilence” for its name sake cards. Children of Korlis says “Sacrifice Children of Korlis: Gain life equal to the life you’ve lost this turn” while Pestilence is a 4 mana enchantment that has the ability “Black: Each creature and player takes one damage.”

This is the deck for you if you want to slowly become an unstoppable juggernaut. If you want to tutor for tutors to tutor for more tutors. And if you want to stop creature decks in their tracks. The deck is slow, methodical, and leverages some of the most interesting interactions in the Black White color pairing.

Our Commander is Lurrus of the Dream-Den…

Lurrus allows us to cast one permanent from our graveyard with CMC 2 or less each turn. Having Lurrus as our Commander and not our Companion really allows us to open up our choices while keeping the resilence and flexibility that she provides. The deck takes full advantage the cat’s grindy nature through a multitude of cards, but she isn’t the focal point of the deck only the backing track.

Our real commander is Pestilence. The effect is so vital to the deck we run three different versions of the card. Pestilence, Pestilence Demon, and Crypt Rats.

Each card allows us to spend black mana in exchange for damage to players and creatures at instant speed. This puts us firmly in the driver seat for the speed of the game. By playing reactively we are able to discourage attacking, pressure life totals, and take out the many pesky utility creatures running amok.

Each of these cards has a drawback outside of hurting us as well however. Pestilence will sacrifice itself if there are no creatures left and Pestilence Demon and Crypt Rats have a hard limit on toughness and will kill themselves with too many activations. The classic combo back in the day was to use a Cemetery Gate. A 3 black defender that had Protection from Black. You may have heard the acronym DEBT bandied about when referencing Protection. The D stands for damage, as in creatures with Protection can not be damaged by their foe. This meant that your Cemetery Gate would stick around and Pestilence wouldn’t sacrifice itself giving you complete control over the field mana allowing. These days Cemetery Gate ain’t shit.

Introducing our Charms

There are many ways to prevent the damage from Pestilence from affecting our own creatures and establishing our soft-lock. Eight-and-a-half-Tails, aside from being a pain to type and a baller name, allows us to give any permanent protection from white. As well as the ability to turn any permanent white. We can use this to make Pestilence a white card and then protect Eight-and-a-Half-Tails and any other creatures we want to stick around. He also has cute interactions like de-equiping (E in the DEBT acronym) equipment by making it white and giving it’s equipped creature pro white.

Rune-Tail (also from Kamigawi is a 3 mana 2/2 that turns into an enchantment that prevents all damage dealt to our creatures if e have 30 or more life. Once flipped it stays in it’s enchantment form. Of course Commander starts with 40 life so it almost always flips instantly. This is our best version of this effect and is a frequent tutor target.

We also play the EDH classic Avacyn Angel of Hope giving all our permanents Indestructible. Once again preventing them from taking damage from Pestilence.

Our blood flows back inwards…

Now that the issue of creatures has been accounted for how do we make sure we don’t kill ourselves with out own Pestilence effects? The answer is an all time classic, lifegain. The deck runs two types of lifegain. The first is meant to give us a larger cushion through typical soul warden effects

We only run 5 of these effects unlike most other soul sister decks. Instead focusing on only the cream of the crop to prop up our life total. This is due to the true life gain strategy: Children of Korlis.

Child gains back all the life we’ve lost in a turn. This can be used as a simple fog effect blanking damage dealt by a big swing. However when paired with Lurrus we are able to activate the ability more than once in a turn. Child tracks the life lost all turn. So if we lose 20 life then sac Child we get our 20 life back. Sac them again? Now we’re up 20 life. Child with just Lurrus and Pestilence is already good but this deck is designed to make those numbers go crazy.

Self harm for fun and for profit!

The main way to lose life in the deck is through activating Pestilence 10 times in a turn but the deck also plays several one off effects that allow us to pay huge sums of life for huge profit.

Hatred is one of the coolest combat tricks ever. The deck already wants to keep up mana for Pestilence so people don’t often see it coming. It can be used as a kill spell, or more fun as a player removal spell. Target an opponents commander to have them knock out another opponent. Or more fun target lurrus for a small +18/18 gaining back 21 life back and securing a KO. Think people will block lurrus? No worries that’s what Eight Tails is for. Turn your opponents board white and attack with impunity.

Command the Dreadhorde is a fantastic mass reanimation spell. Pulling from everyone’s graveyard it is typically gated by not wanting to drop too low. But with Child around you can grab whatever you want back. Command the Dreadhorde is a great way to get an alpha attack after keeping the board clear for several turns in a row.

Vilis serves double duty as massive card draw and a way to lose a ton of life. Combine with Pestilence and you have a cocktail that’ll make you black out and deck out.

Is Lurrus really enough though?

The deck runs many ways to bring back Child over and over and over and over and over and over again.

While Phyrexian Reclamation and Sword of Light and Shadow are common additions to graveyard creature decks Enduring Renewal is where the real gas is.

The first two lines of text are all downsides which is how you know the card is going to be busted. The effect we want is “Whenever a creature is put into your graveyard from play, return it to your hand.” Yep Whenever. There’s no limits on how many times you can return Child with this card. This means your only limit for life gain is how much white mana you have.

Additionally the downsides of the card aren’t really bad in this list. Playing with our hand revealed can give away some information we would prefer to be secret but given our gameplan is board based we aren’t missing out on much. Discarding any creature cards we draw is typically a downside but given Lurrus lets us play our small creatures from our grave like it was our hand and any big creatures can be brought back off animate dead or dance of the dead (both of which are cast off lurrus) means discarding might as well be drawing.

Sure the machine, machines, but where does all the mana come from?

This deck is mana hungry. Everything we want to do is activated abilities that cost mana and we want to activate them a lot. And we aren’t even in Green how do we get the mana? The keen reader at this point may be screaming that all the costs are black and there’s a little card called Cabal Coffers.

Cabal Coffers is a land that costs 2 mana to activate and adds B for each Swamp we control. Combine this with Urborg making all lands swamps and we can produce incredibly large amounts of mana. You’d think it’d be difficult to get both but with our friendly 1 mana artifact expedition map and Lurrus we can assemble both every game. This makes expedition Map one of the best cards in the deck and should always be tutored for. It’s so vital that we have an entire expedition map package.

Urza’s Saga find Expedition map (and other fun 0 and 1 CMC artifacts. Thespian Stage copies Cabal Coffers for even more mana. Petrified Field get’s back any lands that are destroyed. While Castle Locthwain provides card advantage. Phyrexian Tower lets us save creatures from exile and rebuy ETBs with Lurrus. And Glacial Chasm protects our life total. Not to mention more versions of these effects and other effects.

The Deck also follows more traditional ramp. Including a large number of rocks. Format all-star Smothering Tithe, and Wayfarer’s Bauble which can be used every turn with Lurrus to increase our land count.

Inexorable Control

Children of Pestilence is a slow deck. After all the main win condition is activating Pestilence 40 times to kill your opponents. It’s also a beast that can not be stopped short of exceptional levels of hate.

Pestilence itself keeps faster aggro decks off the board completely. Nothing small is going to live and going wide won’t matter. Combine this with lifegain and getting to your mid game is all but guaranteed. In the mid game the card advantage engines and ramp allow you to march forward towards the finish line. What makes this deck strong despite being slow is it’s resilience. Targeted removal is but a temporary setback given Lurrus’s recursion. Combine it with other cards and nothing is gone forever.

Restoration Specialist must have been made just for this deck. A 2 drop that can be brought back off of Lurrus to get an artifact and enchantment back. Not only does this allow us to grab Pestilence, or animate dead, or necropotence back it also grabs an artifact. Turning Lurrus into a twice a turn recursion engine. Grab an animate dead and a Mishra’s Bauble. Or a Pestilence and expedition map!

Codex Shredder acts as a catch all that makes Lurrus recure any card including Instants and Sorceries with enough mana. While Priest of Fell Rites functions as another Animate dead. Having unearth is also nice for emergency pestilence turns without a protection piece.

Endless Toolbox…

The deck gets away with running many one-off effects because it’s a tool box deck. For those unfamilar a tool box list is one that has many tutors and silver bullets. Having tutors that grab what you need when you need it frees up deck space for more interesting cards. While this deck does have certain tutor targets that are very high priority (expedition map being the main one for cabal coffers) once the engine has been deployed the tutor package opens up.

The deck does run the classic tutors including Demonic tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Enlightened tutor, and Diabolic Intent. However it’s the special tutors that are the most interesting.

We’ve already covered Expedition map which is one of the pillars of the deck. Academy rector is another. Academy rector can exile itself when it dies to tutor for any enchantment and put it directly into play. Most of the time this is Pestilence, but it can also be a Necropotence, Smothering Tithe, or Seal of Cleansing.

Vile Entomber is especially cool and with enough time and mana can grab anything. Typically you want to tutor a Animate dead to your graveyard first then using a Sacrifice outlet you can recur Vile Entomber every turn finding any missing pieces or silver bullets.

Ranger Captain of Eos tutors a 1 drop creature. Typically Children of Korlis but it’s more than happy to get a soul sister, esper sentineal, or serra ascendent.

And thats the deck…

There are more intricies and fun interactions in the list but I leave it to you the reader to discover them for your selves. If you wish to play the deck the link is here https://moxfield.com/decks/MnlZ5nIefUC486UL4IxUHw