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My new Sultai zombie tribal deck, based upon my old (and first ever) EDH deck - Grimgrin, Corpse-Born tribal.

If you are interested in this list, please take a look at my article I wrote about the same list for MTGCasualPlay.com, updated for deck changes up to July 8, 2015.

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-1 Forest - I brought out a Forest from the deck since it frankly doesn't need as much non-black color support and we were looking to slim the deck down a land or two. So far I haven't seen any troubles. The real reason this deck needs as many lands as it does it because, to even compete in the late game with other decks, it can sometimes need 11-15 mana for one single turn to both cast a big effect like a mass-reanimation spell on top of other cards in hand for its game-determining play. Otherwise, this deck can very quickly get brushed under the rug by just requiring card advantage and mana the deck doesn't have an easy time getting also considering how easy it is to lose mana and card investments to wrath effects so often.

-1 Altar of Dementia - For flavor I loved having all three Altars, but this one was relatively gimmicky. It doesn't combo with anything that doesn't also require an active Rooftop Storm which is nothing too unique or special to our deck, and while it was another valuable sac outlet that could generate us value in other ways than mana generation, I never really had much fondness for it in practice. I could be proven wrong in the future, but I cut it for now for some of Amonkhet's cool goodies.

-1 Gempalm Polluter - I found that this card actually got much more miserable for me right around the time that I transferred this deck to its current Sultai shell. In theory it does a great deal of damage and can win games when we have a mountain of Zombies on the field, but in our deck now we frequently don't have a consistent-enough amount of zombies out at one given point in a game, so it's been proven better to have an effect that can deal this amount of damage either more frequently (cycling and then trying to not reanimate but Regrowth the card back to hand is not something this deck does much of, let alone often) or more reliably (board wipes are common and our large on-the-battlefield zombie counts can often be thanks to tokens, which won't linger around to give us value when an ill-timed wrath hits). This is why we have taken a liking to our effects that deal damage/provoke life loss when either creatures enter the battlefield or die, or our effects that are activated abilities on creatures that do what Polluter does, but it can be activated multiple times and at any time.

-1 Ever After - I don't want to cut this card, but it's just too clunky to warrant having around for any amount of time. This slot is being refilled with a much more cost-efficient reanimate spell. Honestly, Ever After probably could have kept its slot in my eyes if it provided a more consistent way to reanimate value into a quick win or potentially game-ending battlefield circumstances -- for example, a late-game Ever After after using Buried Alive spells out a potential game-over for opponents, but in a typical game I usually cannot string these two cards (of the 99 in my deck) for a combo finish that frequently, obviously, and so what Ever After frequently does is just grabs a creature or two that don't necessarily have a splashy synergy between themselves (imagine having Corpse Augur and Cryptbreaker as a hypothetical pair, for example) that don't make a great impact on the boardstate for the steep six mana that Ever After requests, and I'm left feeling both like I could have saved the spell for a more opportune time and like I should never count on an ideal reanimation pair being in the graveyard by the time I need to cast this spell. Its "black zombie" clause also adds a bit of flavor to the card which I like because it can make my Grave Titan and Sheoldred, Whispering One stronger threats on board depending on my zombie lord situation, but this is unfortunately a minor caveat. I will prefer a much more cost-efficient reanimation spell in this slot.

+1 Lord of the Accursed - Another zombie lord at 3cmc but doesn't need two black symbols! This deck has definitely flexed a certain kind of consistency, that's for sure - and that consistency is its ability to get and use lords in every single game because WotC has just given players so many Zombie lords to utilize now. I still don't even have all of them!

+1 Plague Belcher - I'm not a big fan of its downside since without our lords a lot of our creatures would be forced to die if we put -1/-1 counters on them. However, I'm glad to give this one a try because, for consistency's sake, this zombie beast gives us another effect that reads similarly to Diregraf Captain, and it's also a beater that is frankly pretty damn aggressively costed and can cause some mayhem all on its own.

+1 Necromancy - I didn't have these reanimation spells in this deck before and honestly I think the reason why I didn't ever before was because I figured this deck already had a passable-enough amount of reanimation by its own to warrant these non-tribal solutions to reanimation magic, thanks to cards like Sheoldred, Victimize, and Gravespawn Sovereign. While the deck doesn't do as much self-milling anymore (which would obviously strengthen these cards) I'm still ready to put these in since they are just that good and are perhaps the two very best reanimation spells in EDH (barring Reanimate, I guess). Animate Dead is the most mana-efficient we get in our reanimation effects in this deck and is one of the cheapest effects in the format. Necromancy at 3 mana means we pay an additional mana for its flash flexibility, but it's still pretty commitment-free in comparison to the other effects we could be running (read: Ever After). As discussed more in the section on Ever After, this deck's consistency could definitely benefit from adding more to-graveyard tutoring, so Entomb has become another clear want for this deck.

+1 Animate Dead - Read above.

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Date added 9 years
Last updated 7 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

11 - 0 Mythic Rares

38 - 0 Rares

25 - 0 Uncommons

9 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.70
Tokens Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie Wizard 1/1 UB
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