I'm not sure either!
I'm just looking for thoughts and discussion really. I have a hard enough time considering fitting it into my own list, which is bigger and slightly less powerful. If I had to throw something out there (in the dark with no experience with your cube) I'd say
Stupor or
Smallpox.
Stupor just seems underpowered to me. It's a three mana sorcery that doesnt impact the board and is not tons better than
Mind Rot. Perhaps
Hymn to Tourac has spoiled me though.
In my own cube, black midrange/aggro decks tend to be more synergy based and want more cohesive 3 drops than
Stupor...sometimes they don't even want
Hymn to Tourac that much. (One mana discard is still great because of the cost). Against aggro/midrange I think control decks also prefer board interaction at that price. I can see it being good in control vs control though.
Smallpox is another card we tried and cut. It certainly is powerful, but it seems to be a narrower sacrifice themed card than
Altar's Reap. The payout is greater, but it's less flexible and less decks will want it, in my experience. I can see it being a lot different for you since you have 4x
Gravecrawler and 2x
Bloodghast. I also think the card draw provides the deck with a lot of consistency to set up a smooth engine, which I value over spiking a pox effect which may come at the wrong time.
I agree with your concern about density of sacrifice effects; I am worried my list might be starting to push the boundaries there too. In the end though, I believe the nature of cube (powerful cards, 2 for 1s) will always allow for control decks. 4-5 cheap blockers/interactions (like how SGG played
Voice of Resurrgence in their PT-DGM deck... aggressively costed creatures with good rates can always go in a control deck even if R&D intended for them to attack...also think
Strangleroot Geist or
Boros Reckoner)+ a nice helping of 3-5 mana 2for1s + 2-3 over the top finishers is a fine formula in color, and I think you'd have to cut a lot for that not to work. Jund in standard right now is a perfect example (although people might disagree on calling it a control deck I guess) of how a lot of card advantage together in a deck is an easy recipe for being the control deck in a matchup.
Finally, what really opened my eyes was that those M14 decks I was telling you about were control decks!!!! It seems pigeonholed into sacrificing for value with recursive/value creature or threaten effects, and that's the combo people think of in M14 too, but sacrificing chump blockers or removed blockers is great too, and the added benefit is that costing less really helps the control deck to do more things. I'll post one of the M14 lists I drafted (possibly my favorite draft ever) to show what I mean after I get back from FNM
.