Introduction
Welcome to Gay Spanish Zombies! This is a low-budget UB Commander deck with
Ghost of Ramirez DePietro
and
Tormod, the Desecrator
at the helm. The deck focuses on using Ramirez DePietro as a card advantage engine that also triggers Tormod to amass a large army of zombie tokens so you can crush your opponents!
Background
This deck was originally just named Spanish Zombies for obvious reasons — Ramirez DePietro's name clearly has Spanish origin, and Tormod makes zombie tokens. But then I read the flavor text on the original
Ramirez DePietro
card, which describes him as a "most flamboyant pirate." Given this tidbit of lore and the fact that historically, many chose a life of piracy to escape governments that forbade them from living a gay lifestyle, it simply made sense that Ramirez DePietro must have been gay. Thus, Gay Spanish Zombies was born!
Making Ramirez Work
The deck is built around how
Ghost of Ramirez DePietro
's recursion ability triggers
Tormod, the Desecrator
to make a 2/2 zombie token. In order to get any advantage out of Ramirez DePietro, though, we need ways to put cards into our graveyard from our hand or library. There are two primary methods to do this:
- Cycling. Cycling lands like
Lonely Sandbar
were shoe-ins for this deck. The opportunity cost of playing them is low, and they effectively draw us an extra card and make a zombie token every turn. There are even cards like
Windcaller Aven
that get us additional benefit from cycling, such as making Ramirez DePietro even more difficult to block.
- Self-Mill. Dredge (
Stinkweed Imp
) and other ways to mill our library like
Court of Ambition
are great for filling our graveyard and getting fantastic card selection with Ramirez's ability.
Making Tormod Work
Tormod is an easier puzzle to solve. Aside from Ramirez, there are plenty of ways to trigger Tormod. Some of my favorite inclusions are:
-
Psychatog
. This little atog has a reputation from its days in Standard, and he does a great job of amassing a zombie army with Tormod at lightning speed! He also helps put dredge cards in our graveyard, and one discard activation with him is free each turn with Ramirez.
-
Scrabbling Claws
and
Relic of Progenitus
. In addition to being solid graveyard hate, these two cards get us an extra zombie each turn at very low cost.
-
Tortured Existence
. This seemingly random common enchantment from Stronghold lets us use as much black mana as we have available to have two creature cards do the tango and raise an undead army in the process!
Graveyard Value
With the amount of self-mill this deck does, we end up with a sizeable graveyard, which means we should get as much value out of it as we can! Some great examples are:
-
Narfi, Betrayer King
. Beyond being a creature we can easily get back from the graveyard (thus triggering Tormod), Narfi also happens to pump our zombie tokens, making them that much more lethal! He's the only reason we're playing snow basics in this deck.
-
Bloodghast
. This friendly vampire is so easy to get back from the graveyard, bringing plenty of zombie friends with him.
-
Daring Fiendbonder
. The deck is pretty reliant on keeping Tormod in play, and this Ikorian is a very synergistic way of making sure Tormod sticks around a while.
-
Wonder
. The only thing deadlier than an army of zombies is an army of flying zombies! And Wonder makes that happen with very little investment.
-
Dread Return
. This is a perfect deck for Dread Return — we incidentally make hordes of zombie tokens. We can sacrifice three of them to Dread Return, get back the best creature card in our graveyard, and make two more zombie friends in the process!
Other Finishers
There are a few other finishers I want to make sure to mention. Zombies are scary, but sometimes they need a little help to get the job done.
- Extra Turn Spells. There are actually a few budget-friendly extra turn spells out there, like
Part the Waterveil
and
Karn's Temporal Sundering
, and they work great in this deck. The zombie token plan can feel a bit slow since they enter tapped, but an extra turn spell gets them turning sideways extra quickly!
-
Gempalm Polluter
. This forgettable Legions common can deal a lot of damage very quickly in this deck! Gempalm Polluter nails an opponent for as much life as we have zombie tokens while also forming a solid card advantage engine with Ramirez.
-
Syr Konrad, the Grim
. This deck sends creature cards all over the place, and the graveyard is a high traffic intersection for them. Syr Konrad gets extra value from everything we're already doing incidentally to get damage on our opponents.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed Gay Spanish Zombies! There are so many micro-interactions between the cards in this deck that lead to huge amounts of value over the course of a game. Even if you don't win, hopefully you'll feel like you got to take a lot of game actions and had a lot of fun along the way. Adios!
