Card/Deck Revisiting Zombies

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Yeah, I always forget that reaver exists for some reason...

Anyways, reaver's problem is the same as that of most of the cards I listed: it’s too low power and high cost for that environment.

It’s kind of an awkward topic, because I’m not even sure how viable blue tempo--even in a support role-- is in a more powered environment competing with red decks. However, the cube tutor list already has some pretty low power blue tempo cards: man-o'-war and pestermite: so maybe blue can get there. What blue offers is disruption, evasion, and card draw.

You might ultimately have to errata or make custom cards, but it just feels a little invasive here, since there is almost no supporting blue aggro zombie architecture, and I could see that getting a bit out of control.

Military intelligence, nightveil specter, mesmeric fiend, vapor snag and brain maggot seem like they could be strong. Brain maggot and fiend are excellent curve disruptors for blue to take advantage of and work really well with the existing sacrifice mechanics. Nightveil specter is a powerful card that benefits from disruption, is an incentive to go U/B, and provides evasion. That might be a good erata target to make a zombie. You would probably want at least one more cheap bounce spell as well, and gush would be great.

Bident is probably too slow for the environment overall; and as much as I would like to see sedraxis alchemist be good, the blue permanent requirement is probably not realistic. It would be great to have another blue flying zombie, but since siren's base stats are too weak for your environment, you could consider doubling up onstitched drake, buffing the siren's stats, or running a second errata nightveil.

I think military intelligence has potential due to its CC. Dealing damage while drawing cards is much better than night's whisper, especially in a tempo deck where those draws translate to putting your opponent further behind on board position.

The build around that is most interesting, and screams unique identity as a blue zombie deck, is undead alchemist. If your zombie deck can go wide (or fly or disrupt with blue’s help), that card can quickly create board dominance, especially when combined with opposition. He is probably too narrow for your environment though.
 

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Yeah, even in my environment, by the time reaver generally is ready to attack, it’s attacking into a developed board state, and its turn 5 selective disruption is a bit weak. If it was one less mana, it could be a powerful card over here on the play, due to the way our curves work out, but as the card is, it just is a little bit too slow. I would probably be more likely to run hippie.

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I think if you do run military intelligence with the idea of playing it in tempo decks, having one or two pieces of one {U} mana bounce will be important. I would imagine that military intelligence would be coming down turn 3, and those decks will generally want to bounce something on that turn so that their one and two drops have good attacks.

Card also has great overlap with battalion and you already have a few of those guys. Could be a way to open the door to W/U or R/U tempo decks, if you don't have that already.
 
I know I'm usually the guy defending under-powered cards, but I find Military Intelligence to be purely underwhelming. I mean, it COULD be good...but it seems like a little too much work and not enough pay off. I mean if you were playing a cube where enchantments mattered, aggressive decks were good, blue tempo was the go-to strategy when drafting that color, and had enough reliable cheap creatures with evasion to trigger it at least a few times then it might be good. But that's a lot of conditions to meet for a card that is just allowing blue aggro to draw a card here and there. Cuz nothing else that would support blue aggro does that....

plenty of things. I was gonna list a bunch but I got lazy.
 
I'm never taking out my specter.

It's a classic. The art is amazing on the reprint (IMO anyway). And random discard is extremely powerful, especially when landed early (for those still running dark ritual or similar). I think it's still cubeable honestly. Maybe not in a power max cube though.
 

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Specter never did anything for me. I liked it for a long time, but nobody ever drafted it or managed to hit with it.
 
It usually gets drafted and ends up in the final 40 here, and hits maybe every other game it's in. Sure, there are better cards, but I mostly cube out of nostalgia. That's a why I'm so grognard-y about new cards.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Hmm, lots of ideas but nothing feels quite like "it". I don't know if this is a problem that can be solved. Anybody have much success with blue zombie decks in their cubes?
 
Sooooo... EMN has given us something nifty
gisaandgeralf.jpg

This is the sort of creature that immediately makes me want to brew a million things. Which is good! I could see my drafters feeling the same way. The big question comes down to whether or not there is enough support for the crazy siblings. A few of the cool zombies that I run or could run:

That is only... 8 cards, so I'm not certain that it's nearly enough, but some of us run Haakon, right?? A couple ancillary things I've noticed
  • They are a 4/4 for 4, which isn't bad
  • They provide incidental mill, which can self power their ability, or proc something like delirium, a reanimation spell, or Sidisi.
Thoughts? Probably just too narrow?

Edit: forgot a couple really important and tunable looking zombies!

Recurring Sidisi 2.0 every turn seems... pretty strong
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Note the zombie twins say zombie creature from your graveyard.
I've basically found that all nameless inversion does is confuse my drafters, since while it is a zombie, that basically never matters, since you can't use it to cast gravecrawler, return it with relentless dead, etc
 
I really like Ruinator but it's in my cube to give additional depth to cheaty strategies while still being hardcastable late-game. It's much better if you Pod into it (which gives you the creature cards to recast it later) or CoCo it out or Unearth it than it is straightforwardly cast. It's also one of the biggest creatures in my cube, stat-wise, so people will jump through hoops for it sometimes anyway.
 
I like Ruinator well enough. Could probably find a slot for it, even if only to give a nice creatures-in-the-yard sign, and as a reason to be in blue, caring about zombies. Switching out something for Sidisi, Undead Vizier solely because the awesome interaction potential with G+G, so really want to make it workable if possible
 
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