I've found diregraf ghoul to significantly underperform in every zombie tribal I've seen- I'll reccomend Cryptbreaker in its place. With the volume of etb effects, have you considered Ghostway or similar in the sideboard?

Yeah, Diregraf Ghoul is a terrible card and I hate playing it. Still. this is an Aggro deck, so I don't want games to go long. Therefore, I decided against Cryptbreaker, a 1 power creature needs a significant aggro-relevant ability to be included in an Aggro shell, and Cryptbreaker is a pretty grindy card. It's really good on boardstalls, so it is not far-fetched to put into the sideboard.

I thought about flicker effects, but I'm not sure my ETBs are impactful enough. Against which decks would you side it in?

Nantuko Husk is worth it as a 2-of as long as you are running Gravecrawler. Nice deck! I'm drooling over the white zombies but I'm already BUG with too much synergy between my colors in my zombie deck.

I agree that it is a very strong option. I'll try running some in place of 2 Messengers for a while. I only abstained so far because I disliked them being a 3-drop, that is the slot with the most competition. If we had Carrion Feeder in Modern, just how awesome would that be?

I also like the grindy approach of your BUG deck. I think you'd really enjoy some copies of Diregraf Captain there. I think it's superior to Plague Belcher in most aspects and a much better CoCo hit.

I'll try it out, see how it works! I'm really hoping for a new sacrificer to replace the belcher in the upcoming sets with all the zombie support the last few years. I had Carrion Feeder in my deck for a while instead of the husk and it was glorious. Legacy is a different beast, though.

Just curious, have you been winning matches through combat damage or through drain damage more often? I have pondered this question for some time while building, testing and refining my own Zombie deck. My own conclusion is that Zombies need to go wide (be it the combat route or the drain route), because you're just not going to edge combat with 1/1, 2/1 and 2/2s (outside of hoping for Death Baron every game). With Plague Belcher, Wayward Servant and Diregraf Captain, we have 3 drain enablers. Geralf's Messenger itself drains as well, and combos with Plague Belcher. Gravecrawler can be cast repeatedly if you have a sac outlet (such as Viscera Seer). It can even create more Zombies that can be sacrificed for even more drain with Diregraf Colossus, with each cast. And finally, Relentless Dead is a one-card engine that allows you plenty of recursion.

What I'm trying to say is, a Zombie deck that goes for drain and bypasses combat can be an option as well. It grants you insulation against board wipes too.

Draining is a way, but leads to a significantly slower kill on average. The reasons I don't go further down the drain route start with Collected Company. For Diregraf Captain, which is a perfectly fine card on its own, I have to go into Blue, which puts even more strain on an already very strained manabase (Geralf's Messenger). I could move away from White, but losing Path and Tidehollow really hurts the deck a lot. Furthermore, even in a CoCo deck, you'd want a maximum of maybe ~10 3-drops, we don't have Zombie manadorks to accelerate. The 3-drop slot is already a nightmare to fill in a Mono Black Zombie deck, there are just way too many strong options. The drain plan kind of requires Diregraf Captain and Plague Belcher, which I don't think is that great of a card without everything coming together at the right time. He just doesn't have the raw power and blowout potential of Death Baron, and if you are not lucky, is just a 3/2 Menace for 3, which is bad.

As for Diregraf Colossus, he is just not good enough in a CoCo deck, we miss on a lot of cast triggers. He is also a removal magnet and does nothing when he comes down, I fear he is just too slow in a format full of Fatal Push and Path to Exile. Geralf's Messenger almost always deals 4 and can come back, Death Baron can lead to huge blowouts with Collected Company. When I commit 3 Mana in Modern, I kind of want to see at least some benefits immediately. That's also why Wayward Servant is probably the worst card in the deck, which hurts to say, because I really love the design itself. You want to play the thing on Turn 2, but Tidehollow Sculler is just so much stronger. The good thing is that most people undererstimate or even ignore the card, so over the course of a game you can speed up your clock with maybe 3-6 additional damage, which is good enough.

I think Drain leads to good supplemental damage in the deck, but the cards we have don't feel impactful enough to build around it I believe. We'd need a decent 2-drop Blood Artist-style Zombie that can bash and drain to get towards a critical mass of drain creatures. With all the good stuff happening at 3 Mana, it's just too slow to keep up I believe. While Wayward Servant and Diregraf Captain are somewhat good enough to splash in regular Zombie decks, Plague Belcher and Diregraf Colossus just don't make the cut for me in Modern. When they are good, they can be really good, but they are also just not very reliable.

That said, a Zombie drain deck would make for amazingly janky and fun fringe deck, so why not go for it? While I don't believe it has the edge over a combat-oriented build against most of the metagame, it certainly has more than enough power to steal a couple of wins on its own.

I don't know much about zombies or company decks, but I do know a bit about Big Zoo and Death And Taxes. In those decks (creature-based aggro/midrange), the powerful cards on their curve are at 2 mana and 3 mana, however you still need 1-drops to play quickly enough. In these kinds of decks, you should be playing nine 1-drops to get a turn 1 play consistently enough but without deviating from your plan of winning with 2-drops and 3-drops. In fact, ideally you should be playing exactly nine 2-drops as well, but that's less important.

I worry about the lack of ways to interact with things other than creatures. Because you play creatures than can be discarded, I think you should have 4 Path to Exile and 2 Collective Brutality in the mainboard.

Hey Toolmaster, thanks a lot for your comment, very insightful.

I was wrecking my mind a lot about the curve and that was a very helpful example. I've gone down to to 10 1-drops, 10 because I run 1 or 2 more creatures in total than Big Zoo because of the CoCo deckbuilding restrictions, I also miss out on mana dorks unfortunately. Finding good 2-drops in Zombie is a bit tricky unfortunately, the power level is not great at that cost. I basically can choose from Relentless Dead, Putrid Leech, Wayward Servant and Tidehollow Sculler. Now the Tidehollow is obviously a clear winner here, but the others are tricky, as they are not that powerful as Thalia & Arbiter are or Ooze, Voice and Goyf, and they all have full colored mana cost to complicate my mana situation. The 3-drop spot however is pretty amazing all around, all of them are very impactful plays. Considering I'm running CoCo, I've gone heavier on the 3-drop here with 10 creatures while making a cut at 2 CMC for 8 creatures total. So far I haven't had many problems curving out, and my CoCompanies are almost always fire. So my final split (for now) is 10-8-10. Do you think that's a good place to be or does something like 9-9-10 or 9-10-9 make more sense to you?

I'm on 3 Push 3 Path at the moment and have to admit I haven't given it too much thought. I'm basically a bit worried about Death Shadow and Goyf ruining my day, with my limited space I wanted spells that can kill those 2 reliably. I will change it to 4 Path 2 Push now to have more game against Reality Smasher and Tasigur. What's your rationale for mainbord Brutality? I have it in my sideboard for Burn, Combo and Control primarily, since I don't expect to see them as often as Eldrazi Tron and Death's Shadow.

Thanks again for your tips, it was really helpful.

I'm glad to help! I spent close to a week with this deck open in a tab on my phone looking over it before I figured out the curve stuff. I knew there was some input I could offer and the deck looked sweet, but it took me awhile to figure it out.

I think the 10-8-10-4 split is just fine for your curve. That is, 10 1-drops, 8 2-drops, 10 3-drops, and 4 Collected Company as the 4-drops. Then 6 interaction spells and 22 lands, for the main 60 cards.

I think sticking to those 8 2-drops and not forcing a 9th is just fine because it's fringe percentage points, which just aren't worth playing a significantly worse card for. Legacy Death and Taxes has the same problem with their 1-drops - there just isn't a 9th 1-drop worth running that can compare to Mother of Runes or Aether Vial.

For the 6 interaction spells, you have some flexibility. The cards worth considering for those spots, in my mind, are Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize, Path to Exile, Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay, Collective Brutality, and Dismember. I don't think Inquisition of Kozilek or Thoughtseize are right because they are best on turns 1 and 2, but you want to be playing creatures then. Also you already have Tidehollow Sculler. Abrupt Decay is expensive and misses too many relevant things to be in the mainboard when you have so few interaction slots.

That leaves Collective Brutality, Path to Exile, and Fatal Push. You would only play at most 2 Brutality, so you get at least 4 in a split of Path, Push, and Dismember. Honestly, Path is just a better card than the others. If for no other reason, then because it hits Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler without costing life or excess mana. Dismember I don't think is worth playing either, but it is an option to keep in mind. I suppose Murderous Cut is too, but nevermind that.

That leaves 2 slots for either Collective Brutality or Fatal Push. The reason I think Brutality is better is because of its versatility. Fatal Push is better against Shadow, but almost everywhere else it's a tossup or I'd rather have Brutality. Push is the better removal spell, but the life swing on Brutality means that against decks where your life total matters, like Burn or Affinity, you can gain a little life, and against decks where they don't have much to kill, like Titan Shift or Eldrazitron, Collective Brutality gives you a little bit more damage or another hand disruption or both.

As far as curve goes, Push is better in a hand that has both a 1-drop and a 2-drop, but Brutality is better if you only have a 1-drop or have multiple 1-drops, as you can play it on turn 2 pretty easily.

I can't say which is better without testing against a mix of deck in the modern meta. My gut tells me Brutality, but I can also see there being too many hands where you simply don't want Brutality, which would make it an out-of-place card. At the same time, Fatal Push is efficient, yet dead more often.

I don't know what's correct for your sideboard, but I think I know some tips for making one. What's going to be most important with this deck is what you are removing, not what you are bringing in. Don't play sideboard cards because they're good, but rather play them because they replace cards that you remove.

That said, you want 15 cards of hate in your sideboard. You're going to be mostly cutting interaction cards and 1-drops to add sideboard cards, so because of that you'll want most of your sideboard cards to be 1 mana.

You might want Nihil Spellbomb instead of Rest in Peace, but honestly I have no idea. Spellbomb is so much better against any Snapcaster Mage or Tarmogoyf deck, but whether you should be diluting your creatures to play Spellbomb in the first place is questionable. RIP hurts you too, but that doesn't matter against, say, dredge.

The best sideboard card against Eldrazitron is Thoughtseize I think. Almost tempted to say you should be sideboarding 4 of them for Eldrazitron, Titan Shift, and Control. It's good enough against Affinity as well, but I'd only sideboard 4 if your burn matchup is good enough that you can sacrifice those sideboard slots. Just some stuff to think about. I think I'm rambling at this point, so I hope you can at least sort of understand what I'm saying.

Last thing I want to touch on is mana. All of your 2-drops are white. That means I think you should be running 4 Concealed Courtyard. The untapped painless mana early is so good. Because you have Geralf's Messenger I don't know if you really want to be playing Forest or Plains, especially because white and green are such light splashes. Maybe 1 Forest, but I don't think you want Plains. You never need more than 1 source of white or green mana, so I think you can get away with something like:

4x Concealed Courtyard

3x Cavern of Souls

4x Verdant Catacombs

4x Marsh Flats

2x Overgrown Tomb

1x Godless Shrine

3x Swamp

1x Forest

That gives you 16 sources of white mana and 14 source of green mana. The reason I am more okay with Forest than Plains is because you really only need white mana on turn 2, and with Geralf's Messenger on turn 3, you will never fetch plains for turn 2. However, I could totally see fetching for a forest on turn 4 or before a Blood Moon. But you should be able to play your white cards before they get down a Blood Moon, so white mana seems unnecessary.

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate the effort. When it comes to curves and manabases I'm still learning a lot, this kind of feedback was exactly what I was looking for.

I agree on your assessment of the discard spells, it's only something I want out of the sideboard. If I side those in for relevant matchups, I can have up to 11 discard effects in my deck, which should be more than enough to turn the tides if I get outpaced by combos in game 1.

Collective Brutality is very tempting here, it might even push me to consider Relentless Dead as 1 mana to recur a discard Cryptbreaker is very affordable, while Gravecrawler is always a free discard. My burn matchup is a bit of a mixed bag, an unchecked Wayward Servant can often slowly drain 3-5 Life or eat a Bolt for me, Tidehollow Sculler can eat a spell and Cryptbreaker can create blockers for days without triggering Eidolons. If I don't get to stick those though, Gravecrawler, Dread Wanderer and Geralf's Messenger don't exactly make for amazing blockers. It depends on which half of my deck I draw into. Collective Brutality could tip that into my favor.

On the other hand, Fatal Push is really nice to knock down a Thought-Knot Seer, Gavony Township pumps or Scavenging Ooze in addition to the Goyfs and Shadows. It's a tough decision to get right and depends on what I run into. For now, I think I'll keep the Brutality in the sideboard as a silver bullet for matches where it really shines. But I will definitely try them in the maindeck to get a feel for it. If I ever maindeck Relentless Dead, I'll probably make the switch as I'll have a better chance to get more value out of the discard.

Don't play sideboard cards because they're good, but rather play them because they replace cards that you remove.

That was a real eye-opener to be honest, I was struggling a bit with keeping my company hits high. I'll try moving some of the hate over to sticks like Kataki, War's Wage to not dilute my Company hits too often. I took some inspiration from Abzan Company and Counters Company in that regard, Selfless Spirit against boardwipes and Qasali Pridemage for Bridge, Chalice and Blood Moon. I will have to spend more time on that topic in general as I tend to just slam cards that hose stuff without considering how they play with my deck, I guess sideboards are things you spend more time with the more you play and learn the Modern format.

As for graveyard hate, I'm not too worried. It only really hurts my Gravecrawler and Geralf's Messenger, Dread Wanderer only becomes relevant in grindy matches and even then a late 2/1 is nothing esciting. I do definitely want ways to exile Past in Flames, Delve creatures, Goyfs, Snap targets and the usual Dredge suspects. Nihil Spellbomb is good enough for that and I like the cantrip function. A CoCo deck can reasonably operate even with 24 creatures, the minimum that people have calculated for CoCo to be still acceptable is 22. So I can take a bit of a hit on creatures after sideboarding, though not too much.

I think 4 Thoughtseize might be too high, my manabase can be a bit tricky (painful) and many of my creatures come tapped or can't block, so I have to be more careful than others. The edge it has over Inquisition of Kozilek is pretty substantial though, so I have gone up to 3 of them and an Inquisition for Burn or Affinity.

I'm still pretty weak at building sideboards so you made some great points.

As for the manabase, I totally agree with everything you have said. I was maybe too afraid of Blood Moon and Ghost Quarter and neglected the complications that would arise. I'm still a bit afraid of playing just 1 fetchable White source though, if that gets Spreading Seas or anything else happens to it, I suddenly lose 9 White sources at once and only have 4 lands to cast my Path to Exile. I might go 3-2 on Courtyard/Shrine but I'll have to see how it plays out. Definitely taking over all the other changes though!

That was some great feedback and I really appreciate the time it took you to think about and write it. The deck is a lot of fun and with the current diversity in the game it can really have a couple of good games, even though it is such an underplayed tribe. It might not be the best tribe around, but it is enjoyable and has its strong points.

Ghost Quarter and Blood Moon just don't see much play. And your Cavern of Souls is what's going to eat the Ghost Quarter almost every time.

Spreading Seas on the other hand, now that's something to be a little afraid of. But The 2 decks that play it are Merfolk and UW control. UW control doesn't fear Path to Exile because they don't play relevant creatures. Merfolk, on the other hand, will Seas your Godless Shrine every time if the Merfolk player knows what they're doing. I think that justifies a 2nd Godless Shrine, but not a Plains. Probably dropping 1 courtyard, like you said. I also lied in my last comment. You only have 11 green sources for Company (I was counting cavern), but that's probably enough because you have several turns to draw it.

I need to think more on the sideboard. I'll get back to you on it. This deck is sweet though.