BW Zombies in Modern

    Players have pursued tribal decks since the concept of tribes was introduced. Merfolk, Goblins, and Humans are all reasonably popular tribes that have seen a non-zero amount of play in Modern. Some tribes, however, just never seemed able to make the cut. This list of tribes includes kithkin, dragons, vampires, elementals, and, of course, our brain-loving friends the zombies.

    Zombies has seen little play in Modern for a variety of reasons. The first one that springs to mind is the lack of a 2-drop lord, which, for whatever reason, the blue tribe Merfolk has plenty of (thanks Wizards). Without that advantage, it’s important to look for what a tribe does better than others. And in the case of zombies, we’re good at two things: rebuilding after a board wipe, and going wide. While I didn’t use a deck that was built to this completely (like some of the ones that use Blasting Station), we do have a little bit of nice synergy going on.

    Gravecrawler gives us access to a recursive threat, and with two power for a single mana, ends up being a pretty powerful beater once we start getting lords down. It also gives us discard fodder that we can cast later on, making it good in hand, on the battlefield, or in the graveyard. Cryptbreaker helps us go wide and allows us to grind out card advantage later in the game. Binding mummy can tap down potential attackers or defenders, Relentless Dead helps us loop our creatures to grind and Tidehollow Sculler gives us a normally fantastic creature that just gets better with our zombie synergy.

Zombies has a variety of three-drop lords, and for this deck we have Lord of the Accursed and Death Baron. Baron makes our opponent think twice about blocking our attackers, and lets us block evenly against whatever the opponent might have. Lord of the Accursed has the benefit of dodging Anger of the Gods in multiples, and gives us evasion when we need to close games out. And while menace isn’t as good as unblockable outright, it’s a huge buff when we go wide. Finally, we have Diregraf Colossus, who represents basically everything we want to do. He benefits from having creatures in the graveyard, he grows huge on his own, and he gives us extra bodies whenever we cast another zombie.

    One card that many zombies decks forego is Aether Vial, but vial on three does enough for us that it feels worth the include. We can get creatures out faster, get instant-speed Binding Mummy triggers, and even thoughtseize them at instant speed with Sculler. Vial also allows us to use our lords as defensive or offensive combat tricks so we don’t have to telegraph our plans as early. The removal suite is a bit lacking, and consists of two Path to Exile, a Fatal Push, and a Collective Brutality. In my opinion, these are the numbers that need the most tweaking, and while I’m confident the removal suite needs work, I’m not sure what exactly that work should be. Path and Push give us cheap, catch-all creature removal, and Brutality gives us unmatched versatility. The manabase is pretty straightforward, with Caverns to stop counterspells, Mutavaults to give us extra bodies when we have mana we don’t need, and a single Urborg to keep us on black mana.

    In the sideboard, we have Thoughtseize for combo or other problem decks, Stony Silence to deal with artifact decks, Leyline of Sanctity to help against burn and some combos, Field of Ruin for big mana, and another Brutality. We also have Liliana, the Last Hope, which can help us grind out card advantage and give us a synergistic wincon with her ultimate. Relic of Progenitus is our graveyard hate of choice, since it allows us to be a bit more surgical than Rest in Peace, which would potentially hurt our strategy just as much as our opponent’s.

Tips:

Hold onto creatures that you can vial in. Making your opponent guess about what you might have is almost always going to be better than showing them what you actually do.

Tidehollow Sculler can be Vialed in at your opponent’s draw step after they draw to give you more information about their hand.

Use Gravecrawler’s ability to its maximum potential. Getting an extra token out of Cryptbreaker is fantastic, as is getting an extra mode out of Collective Brutality. Crawler’s ability basically eliminates the discard portion of these cards.

Cast zombies on your turn when you can if you have Colossus, since it only triggers off of casting. This can give you a huge attacking force very quickly.

Casting a zombie with Colossus and Binding Mummy on board gets you two triggers, allowing you to tap down even more potential blockers.

Depending on the situation, holding up mana can be your best bet. This can allow you to use the triggers on Relentless Dead, and if your opponent doesn’t kill it, you can make a token with Cryptbreaker.

If you have three zombies down, and one of them is a Cryptbreaker, keep in mind that you can activate cryptbreaker’s token ability before its draw ability for no downside, since its tokens enter untapped.

Extra Spice:

Lord of the Undead is a perfectly reasonable lord choice, since he can give you extra recursion to help play out longer games.

Unbreathing Horde has the potential to be a huge beater, since its size is determined by the size of your graveyard and the size of your battlefield. The second ability is also nice, since it means it can block for ages and not rot away.

Graf Harvest is something I’ve seen talked about, and it’s definitely interesting. For one mana, our zombies all get menace, and we can make more tokens by exiling creatures from our graveyard.

Dread Wanderer can give us another recursive threat, and at only one mana. Plus, this one can block, albeit on delay. It is worth noting, however, that he can only come back if we’re “heckbent.”

Wayward Servant can speed up the clock, and also give you a bit more insurance against decks that are trying to race.

Undead Warchief can be a bit expensive, but is definitely a hard-hitting lord. He makes himself a 3/2, and gives all your other zombies +2/+1 and makes them cheaper.

    To be honest, I can’t even remember where I first saw this Zombies list, just that I’ve had it lying around for a while now. Since making some changes and trying it out, I’ve had a blast. As with any Aether Vial deck, there are quite a few fun Vial tricks you can pull off, and the overall synergy of the deck feels really good. While it doesn’t follow the usual aristocrats-style build of zombies, I think this is just as viable as, if not more viable than, its sacrifice-focused counterparts. While both focus on zombies as a tribe, they do so from very different angles. Zombies bring a lot to the table, and if you’re a fan of beatdown or tribal decks, I definitely recommend giving this a go.