Attrition + Necropotence

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Overview

Sacrificing a creature for Attrition is paying an activated ability’s cost and moves that creature from the battlefield to its owner’s graveyard (it isn’t a discard), so Necropotence’s discard-trigger won’t exile that creature from the graveyard [117.12][701.14][701.7]. If the sacrificed creature is a token it ceases to exist and never goes to the graveyard [704.5d]. Necropotence’s pay-1-life ability exiles the top card of your library face down and creates a delayed triggered ability that will put that exiled card into your hand at the beginning of your next end step; that delayed trigger will still occur even if Necropotence leaves the battlefield [2017-11-17], and you can’t look at those face-down exiled cards [2023-09-01].

The StackRules & CitationsDetails & Edge Cases

Step 1

You activate Attrition’s activated ability and pay its costs, which include and sacrificing a creature as part of the activation cost [117.12][701.14].

Step 2

As you sacrifice the creature to pay the cost, that creature is moved from the battlefield to its owner’s graveyard (or ceases to exist if it was a token) — it is not discarded [701.14][704.5d].

Step 3

Because Necropotence only exiles cards when you discard them, the creature sacrificed for Attrition is not exiled by Necropotence’s discard-trigger (the sacrifice is not a discard) [701.7].

Step 4

Attrition’s ability then resolves and destroys the targeted nonblack creature; that destroyed creature is put into its owner’s graveyard (again not a discard) [404.1].

Step 5

If you use Necropotence’s pay-1-life ability, it exiles the top card of your library face down and creates a delayed triggered ability to put that card into your hand at the beginning of your next end step; that delayed trigger will still occur even if Necropotence leaves the battlefield before the end step [2017-11-17].

Step 6

You cannot look at the face-down exiled cards created by Necropotence’s last ability while they remain face down [2023-09-01].

Resolution

You may sacrifice creatures to Attrition normally while Necropotence is in play. The sacrificed creature is moved to the graveyard as the cost of Attrition’s activation and is not "discarded," so Necropotence’s “Whenever you discard a card, exile that card from your graveyard.” ability does not apply to it [701.14][701.7]. If the creature was a token, it ceases to exist instead of going to the graveyard and so is also not affected by Necropotence [704.5d]. Necropotence’s own exile-for-1-life ability creates a delayed trigger that returns that face-down exiled card to your hand at your next end step even if Necropotence leaves play [2017-11-17], and those exiled cards are face down and not lookable [2023-09-01].