Knights of the Living Dead

Commander / EDH Casual Knights Primer Theme/Gimmick WUB (Esper) Zombie

Exxie97

Creature (30)

• 1x Cemetery Reaper
• 1x Corpse Harvester
• 1x Court Hussar
• 1x Crusading Knight
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Cryptbreaker
• 1x Death Baron
• 1x Diregraf Captain
• 1x Diregraf Colossus
• 1x Ethersworn Adjudicator
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Forgotten Creation
• 1x Geth, Lord of the Vault
• 1x Glen Elendra Liege
• 1x Graveborn Muse
• 1x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born *oversized*
• 1x Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
• 1x Havengul Lich
• 1x Kinsbaile Cavalier
• 1x Knight-Captain of Eos
• 1x Knight Exemplar
• 1x Knights of the Black Rose
• 1x Lich Lord of Unx
• 1x Lord of the Accursed
• 1x Lord of the Undead
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Thalia's Lancers
• 1x Undead Alchemist
• 1x Undead Warchief
• 1x Zombie Master

Enchantment (16)

• 1x Act of Authority
• 1x Arcane Adaptation
• 1x Banishing Light
• 1x Blanket of Night
• 1x Call to the Grave
• 1x Copy Enchantment
• 1x Curse of Disturbance
• 1x Curse of Shallow Graves
• 1x Detention Sphere
• 1x Endless Ranks of the Dead
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Liliana's Mastery
• 1x Necromancer's Covenant
• 1x Oblivion Ring
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Rooftop Storm

Land (36)

• 1x Arcane Sanctum
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Cabal Stronghold
• 1x Command Tower
• 8x Island
• 8x Plains
• 12x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Field
• 1x Tainted Isle
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Instant (1)

• 1x Crib Swap

Commander (1)

Artifact (12)

• 1x Caged Sun
• 1x Coat of Arms
• 1x Coldsteel Heart
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Army of the Damned
• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Crux of Fate
• 1x Martial Coup

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Maybeboard

Creature (9)

• 1x Dakmor Lancer
• 1x Grave Titan
• 1x Lyev Skyknight
• 1x Plague Belcher
• 1x Soulless One
• 1x Stillmoon Cavalier
• 1x Tidehollow Sculler
• 1x Unbreathing Horde
• 1x Vona, Butcher of Magan

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Anointed Procession
• 1x Conspiracy
• 1x Copy Artifact
• 1x Mobilization

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Liliana, Death's Majesty

Land (1)

• 1x Vault of the Archangel

Artifact (2)

• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Kormus Bell

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Storm Herd
• 1x Zombie Apocalypse

Instant (1)

• 1x Nameless Inversion

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(Click below to see description)

Hello and welcome to my Zombie/Knight tribal deck!

The main goal of this casual edh deck is to have fun and use interesting and unique interactions between the zombie and knight tribes to create an unstoppable army of undead knights.

The Intertwining of Tribes

I’ve always wanted to make a commander deck featuring knight tribal. With knights such as Haakon,Stromgald Scourge and Knight Exemplar, the tribe seem to be a powerful one. However I feel the tribe is lacking in a couple aspects.

• #1 Numbers. There just aren’t enough universally good knights, many of them are ether semi-vanilla creatures that don’t bring a lot to the table or are geared against a specific color.
• #2 A strong commander. Prior to dominaria, there has never been a strong knight commander. I’ve messed around with other potential commanders, Queen Marchesa and Vona, Butcher of Magan to name a few, however, with the release of dominaria we were given Aryel, Knight of Windgrace. I personally don’t feel that she is very powerful though. Her ability to generate knights is great and helps with the knights number problem, however her second ability feels counterintuitive. With all the great knight effects like Knight Exemplar and Kinsbaile Cavalier I want to attack, not tap to destroy one creature.

I still think knights as a tribe do not quite have the power to create a fully knight themed EDH deck even after release of dominaria, so I decided to “borrow” the power of another tribe, Zombies.
An esper zombie deck has also been an interest of mine due to the release of white zombies in amonkhet (although ironically I didn't end up using any). I quickly found out however, that esper zombies were lacking a good commander as well. So I decided to combine the two with Zur the Enchanter as my commander.
Zur the Enchanter makes for extremely flexible commander in esper and gives me the resources to take full advantage of both tribes. One of the main appeals of Zur the Enchanter is to have instant access to Arcane Adaptation in order to bridge the zombie and knight tribes. He also is very adaptable and gives the means to react to the current board in different ways.

With Zur the Enchanter having instant access to Blanket of Night, we can use all the mana doublers that black has access to which is great as this deck is pretty mana hungry.

Mana Doublers

• Crypt Ghast
• Cabal Coffers
• Caged Sun (naming black)
• Cabal Stronghold

I’ve also included Sword of Feast and Famine to further double mana (Zur the Enchanter can usually get in for a bit of damage on someone).

Mana Rocks

Many of the mana rocks I’ve included are all 2 mana cost to increase the chances of getting Zur out on turn 3.

• Coldsteel Heart
• Dimir Signet
• Orzhov Signet
• Wayfarer's Bauble
• Fellwar Stone

Sol Ring and Gilded Lotus don’t help get Zur the Enchanter out faster but are great for mana acceleration. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is included just as another option for the Blanket of Night effect. Other lands are for mana fixing.

The main way to close out a game is to create an army of tokens and buff them with lords.

Token Generators

• Diergraf Colossus Can generate a decent amount of tokens for little effort or can get threatening with regular recurring zombies.
• Lich Lord of Unx While not the best token generator the ability to use a horde of zombies to do direct damage is great.
• Army of The Dammed 13 zombies. Then another 13, for a total of 26 zombie for one card. Seems good to me.
• Josu Vess, Lich Knight I LOVE this card, not only can you create a good amount of zombies with him, you can re-activate the kicker if you recur him via casting. (Such as Haakon, Stromgald Scourge and Havengul Lich).
• Knight-Captain of Eos Not good at generating tokens but can create a fog wall if recurred regularly.
• Curse of Disturbance/Curse of Shallow Graves Both are pretty good a generating zombies.
• Undead Alchemist Can be a good option especially if an opponent has gained a lot of life.


• Necromancer's Covenant While expensive, can provide an okay amount of zombies but also can gain a good amount of life ( is also very good when combined with Undead Alchemist).
• Endless Ranks of the Dead Slow in the beginning but quickly escalates out of control with a few zombies on the board.
• Cryptbreaker Just a flexible card. Can be used to discard haakon, make zombies, and give card draw.

Knight have very few but powerful lords, and with the sheer number of zombie lords, even the smallest creature will be able to pose a threat.

General Boosts

• Glen Elendra Liege Boosts all black and blue creatures (pretty much all of them) and has the added benefit of being a knight (also she's riding a freaking BEE).
• Coat of Arms Be careful with this one if someone else is playing tribal as it can work for them too.

Knight Lords

• Knight Exemplar A very good lord that can be extremely annoying for your opponents unless they target her directly.
• Kinsbaile Cavalier Can be a cheap way to give your creatures double strike.

Zombie Lords

• Lord of the Undead Nice lord with some recursion attached.
• Diregraf Captain Has the ability to combo and kill the table
• Liliana's Mastery Gives two 3/3's and boosts all of your other zombies. Good value.
• Zombie Master Gives all zombies unblockable with Urborg or Blanket of Night.
• Death Baron An extremely good lord and rattlesnake.
• Cemetery Reaper A basic lord that can deal with problematic graveyards as well as make zombies.
• Undead Warchief The reduced cost works pretty well with the recursion in this deck.
• Lord of the Accused Can give the zombies some much needed evasion.

This deck packs a decent amount of recursion despite have very little cards that deal with recursion.

Haakon, Stromgald Scourge

Haakon is sort of a lieutenant of this deck. If knight is named for Arcane Adaptation, he allows you to replay any creature from your graveyard. He can be a little tricky to get into the graveyard but once he’s there he becomes a real pest for other players.
One way to get Haakon to the graveyard is to put him there directly with Buried Alive (maybe along with some other knights that are instantly recurrable once Haakon is out).
As of now I only have 3 ways to get Haakon into the graveyard from my hand:

• The previously mentioned Cryptbreaker.
• Forgotten Creation
• To some extent Graveborn Muse (if you can fill up your hand and discard Haakon).

If Haakon somehow gets exiled, Havengul Lich can work as a wonderful backup.
Once you have reliable recursion, things can get really silly with a card like Rooftop Storm and a sac outlet like Ashnod's Altar.

• Mill all of your opponents with Geth, Lord of the Vault (if Ashnod's Altar is your sac outlet).
• Kill all of your opponents with Diregraf Captain.
• Create infinite 2/2 zombies with Diregraf Colossus (because we are still casting them).
• Make your opponents sacrifice their board with Grave Pact or Fleshbag Marauder
• Get an infinitely big Grimgrin, Corpse-Born.

One other recursion item is Nim Deathmantle. Not the best but it can save key creature, gives evasion and Zombifies creatures.

The idea behind Zur being the commander is flexibility.
Need creatures? Go for Curse of Shallow Grave.
Need removal? Go for Detention Sphere.
Need cards? Go for Rhystic Study.

Zur's Removal

• Detention Sphere
• Banishing Light
• Oblivion Ring

All of the above are similar, just be mindful that a boardwipe will give everything you exiled back to your opponents.

• Act of Authority Second ability not super useful given how enchantment play a large role in this deck. Can still be useful to make sure your opponents don’t play their awesome artifacts or enchantments.

Arcane Adaptation

You can go one of two ways with this depending on your situation:

• Name knights to take advantage of Haakon and other knight lords.
• Name zombies to take advantage of the zombie lords.
• Or just name both with Copy Enchantment.

Board Wipes and Removal

• Crux of Fate Can work as a creature wipe in a pinch but can also be pretty one sided if you name dragon on your Arcane Adaptation.
• Martial Coup Just a board wipe that gives you something to work with afterwards.
• Crib Swap While Haakon is on the field, the Crib Swap (or any changing card) can be replayed indefinitely (as long as you have the mana of course).
• Ethersworn Adjundicator Gives flexible spot removal (he is also a knight!).
• Grimgrin, Corpse-Born Not the best form of removal but he can get quite threatening if left unchecked.
• Grave Pact / Fleshbag Marauder Pretty typical sacrificial removal.
• Call to the Grave Eats away at opponents creatures (make sure you have the Arcane Adaptation out for this one).

Other cards that complement the tribal theme of the deck or just value card are listed here.

The "Others"

• Crusading Knight Can be an absolute behemoth if Blanket of Night or Urborg is on the field.
• Thalia's Lancers Good for fetching Haakon if you have some way to discard him.
• Knights of the Black Rose I just like the monarch mechanic so having a way to introduce it into the game on a knight just seemed too good to pass up.
• Court Hussar This is a fun little knight. On his own he is not that great, but with Haakon he becomes a repeatable Brainstorm for 3 mana if you don’t use white to cast him. Or he can sift through your entire deck if you can play him for free (like with Rooftop Storm and Arcane Adaptation on zombie).
• Corpse Havester Gives me lands and searches for zombies. Just seemed like an auto include.
• Phyrexian Metamorph Not really sure why he is in here (I guess I just like having one). Easily could be replaced by something else.
• Lightning Greaves Mostly in to protect Zur.

If you have any suggestions please share them, they are greatly appreciated.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 36 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.62
Tokens	Shapeshifter 1/1 C, Soldier 1/1 W, The Monarch, Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie Wizard 1/1 UB