While this was just a first draft, it quickly showed there is some real power in the archetype. Eight two-power creatures for B ensure aggressive openings, while Gravecrawler and Geralf’s Messenger give the deck some genuine resilience against sweepers such as Whipflare or Slagstorm, which—unless backed up with graveyard removal or a fast clock—will not win you the game against this deck. The split of removal spells should probably be all Go for the Throat rather than the 2/2 with Doom Blade, although I’d actually eschew these in favor of just Tragic Slip, which has been excellent in everything for me so far. Altar’s Reap overperformed whenever a Gravecrawler or Messenger was being sacrificed and also gives you a morbid trigger for those Tragic Slips. The sideboard is my own first guess; Black Cat and Distress are a significant amount of discard against slower and more controlling decks when combined with maindeck Liliana, while the four graveyard hate slots should illustrate just how important I feel these may be in the near future. (Of note is that if you ignore the Lilianas, this deck comes to under $100 here on StarCityGames.com: Zombies could very well be the budget player’s new deck of choice, much as Vampires was a while ago.)

Where do we go from here with the tribe though?

Splashing blue needn’t hinder our ability to generate BBB for Geralf’s Messenger, as we can easily just use the full set of both Darkslick Shores and Drowned Catacomb as our U sources and still be able to make a turn 1 play most of the time. Likewise if we go red, though we’d likely want to drop the Lashwrithe with either of these splashes, though this isn’t exactly an inconsolable loss. Assuming blue, we obviously get Diregraf Captain as an additional lord and solid upgrade on the somewhat embarrassing Walking Corpse, assuming we don’t mind exchanging a two for a three too much. Phyrexian Metamorph becomes Phantasmal Image, which works great with Geralf’s Messenger and also gives us a solid answer to Thrun, the Last Troll, Geist of Saint Traft, or similar. Mana Leak and sideboarded Negate give an aggro-control edge. Or we could even go a little crazy and add a bunch of Ponder, Thought Scour, Vapor Snags, and such along with Snapcaster Mage and Delver of Secrets? Who knows. I could go on for ages here but will instead just show you a few cards I think are interesting to consider in a Zombie deck:

In time, I see Zombies splitting up into a bunch of distinct archetypes—a “28 Days Later” fast aggressive version (probably with red), a slower, more midrangey “Romero” U/B version that maybe includes some number of Grave Titan, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born, and Black Sun’s Zenith (which works fine with Geralf’s Messenger, just so long as you are just resetting the +1/+1 counter, and not outright killing it). Then there is just maybe a wacky combo version that uses something like Gravecrawler, Diregraf Captain, and Grimgrin or even Heartless Summoning to ping the opponent to death. This is possibly on the side of the Havengul Lich / Heartless Summoning / Perilous Myr / Priest of Urabrask combo.

B/W Tokens

Early lists posted were a little top heavy and clunky in my mind—you can definitely shave off the fourth Elspeth Tirel (and possibly swap one of the others for an Increasing Devotion), while Gather the Townsfolk is an excellent two-drop for the deck you probably want at least three of. Lingering is just as disgusting as everyone says it is, especially when flashed back turn 4 along with an anthem effect.

On that note, if you can build your deck to work a little better with it, I’ll cede that I was wrong about Honor of the Pure; you do want them after all.

Burning Vengeance

This was actually the deck I tested first, as I’ve been playing games with my version of it in the hour before draft at FNM for the last month or so, and I very much wanted this to still be viable. I started with Sam Black hyper combo list (second one in this article) and quickly found it struggled against both U/W and Zombies. Versus U/W, you couldn’t just jam your Burning Vengeance down on three so had to hang about until you had counter backup, by which time they were sitting on a hand of counters themselves or had killed you. Against Zombies, even if you got the enchantment down immediately, you had to use it to burn their creatures more often than not in order to just not die. In both cases, the super-combo finish with Past in Flames and Phyrexian mana spells would have been amazing, if it weren’t for the fact that you had no life to pay for them left by that point. Adding Snapcaster Mage helped as a bit of a roadblock and a way to recast Faithless Looting for just R, and I strongly considered (but didn’t get round to trying) Pyretic Ritual just for the Past in Flames turns. If only Manamorphose were in Standard, this would be incredible… *sigh*

Green-based aggro

If I’m wrong on this, by all means please make light of it (and fun of me) later on, but: I think Predator Ooze sucks and that any decklist you see containing a full set is 100% incorrect. Without any evasion, it gets though once or twice before being chumped a load of times until you die, and as it turns out, being an amorphous blob of goo means you are quite likely to take a Tragic Slip as soon as you arrive on the scene. All this makes up for quite a weak three-drop—if you want one and can generate a lot of green mana though, Dungrove Elder is your man!

I played some games with Jeremy Neeman R/G list from this article, and it was pretty good—Strangleroot Geist is great, and Huntmaster of the Fells ranged from “not bad” to “absolutely outstanding,” dependent on how long he lived for and how many flips I got out of him. Other things I tried:

Dawntreader Elk is no Sakura-Tribe Elder but is still fine—I mean, if your opponent uses spot removal on this bear when you don’t have G up, do you even care?!

Young Wolf is a legitimate Magic: The Gathering card and also sounds like a rap stage name, which some people look for I guess.

Vorapede is relatively unexciting unless you are going into and from it with Birthing Pod, but at least it has trample unlike the Ooze.

Thoughts on the new Standard

While there are many things I have not yet tried (control decks, mainly), and my testing has not been to the kind of depth that produces finely tuned decklists and precise sideboard plans, I’ve dipped my toes deep enough into the new Standard to see that:

Creatures that return from the graveyard, of which there are now many playable (Strangleroot Geist, Loyal Cathar, Gravecrawler, etc.) can be a real headache if you don’t have a more permanent answer to them. Graveyard removal is not just worth sideboarding but may prove to be necessary. Time to dust off those Surgical Extractions!

Tokens are stronger than ever before in all the white-based decks. Ratchet Bomb is very worth playing if you can get it back somehow, and Ray of Revelation will be a very real sideboard card to deal with the crusade effects, particularly in the tokens mirrors, where the player with the largest creatures is typically favored.

While U/W decks are still very strong, they should no longer have a Caw-Blade-esque share of top 8/16 slots!

Finally… Glissa Run Rock!

Based on my assumptions that removing cards from graveyards and killing tokens many times over will be important in Standard now, and after seeing this tweet from Jon Corpora (@feb31st), it came to me that perhaps a deck playing the following could be well positioned:

GerryT uses Sun Titan rather than Glissa to recur the very same artifacts in his 5-color control list, but I decided to explore this G/B route, using Conley Woods‘ GP Orlando winning Jund Wolf Run deck as a shell:

Jund Glissa

Dan Barrett

Test deck on 02-12-2012

Standard

Creatures (20)

• 4 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 2 Acidic Slime
• 2 Grave Titan
• 4 Primeval Titan
• 3 Glissa, the Traitor
• 2 Viridian Emissary
• 2 Dawntreader Elk

Lands (25)

• 6 Forest
• 3 Swamp
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 2 Evolving Wilds
• 3 Inkmoth Nexus
• 4 Woodland Cemetery
• 2 Kessig Wolf Run
• 2 Grim Backwoods

Spells (16)

• 4 Rampant Growth
• 2 Ratchet Bomb
• 1 Horizon Spellbomb
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 2 Green Sun's Zenith
• 2 Black Sun's Zenith
• 3 Tragic Slip

Dawntreader Elk / Viridian Emissary: As I said above, Elk has been alright for me in green-based decks, so I’ve got a split of him (antlers = male) and Viridian Emissary instead of the original Sphere of the Suns, and while this makes ramping from 2 to 4 mana much less consistent, this has yet to bother me too greatly.

Evolving Wilds: These are awesome for the mana of this largely enemy-pair deck, but the balance of cards that fetch basics and the basic lands themselves needs to be carefully managed, hence not a full set.

Grim Backwoods: Will probably end up as just a singleton, but I don’t think you can say no to playing a land in your colors that says “draw a card” on it. Adds value to late-game bears, gets you a morbid trigger, fetchable with Primeval Titan, and great with Grave Titan (if that somehow isn’t enough to win on its own).”

Glissa + artifacts: The backbone of the deck. Ratchet Bomb is repeatable removal for tokens, flipped transform cards, and small creatures. Nihil Spellbomb helps fight undying creatures and flashback spells and at worse can be repeatedly cycled. As can Horizon Spellbomb, though this is probably the most “win more” card in the deck and the easiest cut if you want to put something else in.

Fewer big finishers: With Glissa and co. providing a better control of the early game and the deck in general drawing more cards and having more sources of nickel and dime damage, haymaker finishers feel less necessary, hence the reduced number of Titans.

The removal spells: I strongly feel Geth’s Verdict is not good now with so many token and undying creatures about, and Ratchet Bombs have been added, so I’ve removed the Verdicts and Doom Blades and replaced them with Tragic Slip for the time being. It kills many early threats for a single mana, and your deck can quite easily get you morbid for the full -13/-13. I’ve also removed one Black Sun’s Zenith, as with more smaller creatures of your own, you want to be casting this a bit less. Of course, the sideboard should address any matchups where a different balance of removal is required.

The sideboard: There isn’t one right now, but it probably wants to include the fourth Glissa and additional Ratchet Bombs or Nihil Spellbombs for the matchups in which these shine, and then I think the following could be worth thinking about, both for the sideboard and to try in general:

Is Glissa the key to a new archetype in Standard? I don’t know yet, but I’m keen to find out and may well be trying her with white instead of red (perhaps for some Lingering Souls and Sorins of my own). Let me know how you get on if you take her for a spin—have fun!

 

Dan Barrett

@dangerawesome

danskate [AT] gmail