I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Sam Black’s name in today’s Daily Digest.
Zombies are aggressive, disruptive, and fast (at least in Magic). I’m actually pretty surprised that Zombies doesn’t show up more often in Modern. Sure, there’s a slight vulnerability to Path to Exile, and Liliana of the Veils aren’t exactly cheap, but there are budget versions, like today’s deck, that attempt to solve those issues.
First of all, we have a rock solid manabase that is fetchland free which is perfect if you’re trying to get into Modern on the cheap. Aside from the lack of an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and potentially some Mutavaults, this manabase is more than serviceable.
In order to solve the Path to Exile problem, we have some Blasting Stations. Obviously they could just Path your first turn Gravecrawler, but it’s kind of dangerous to give a swarm aggro deck an extra land so early in the game. The chances are great that they’ll save their Path for later, potentially for a bigger threat like Geralf’s Messenger.
One of the things I like best about this deck is how bad Liliana of the Veil is against it. No matter what choice your opponent makes, they are likely not getting much value, if any. While Liliana would be great in this deck, they are not entirely necessary. Making each player discard cards is certainly in the Zombie deck’s favor, but Gatekeeper of Malakir is also a reasonably powerful, underrated Magic card.
Overall, I’d say this is a pretty good deck for Modern. Just think of it like a more aggressive Junk deck.
Creatures (22)
- 4 Tidehollow Sculler
- 4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
- 4 Diregraf Ghoul
- 4 Gravecrawler
- 4 Geralf's Messenger
- 2 Desecration Demon
Lands (21)
Spells (17)
