Gnawing Zombie
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Gnawing Zombie

Creature — Zombie

, Sacrifice a creature: Target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.

DemonDragonJ on Should I Keep Angrath in …

2 years ago

After deliberating my above list of sacrifice outlets, I have removed several creatures; I removed Gnawing Zombie because Lampad of Death's Vigil is strictly better than it; I removed Gutless Ghoul because Disciple of Griselbrand is better than it in the majority of situations; I removed Skullport Merchant because it cannot sacrifice itself;, and I removed Soulreaper of Mogis and Spark Reaper because their abilities are to expensive to activate; thus, here is my new list of potential sacrifice outlets for my deck:

Sacrifice Outlets Show

Which creature is the most appealing of these?

DemonDragonJ on Should I Keep Angrath in …

2 years ago

seshiro_of_the_orochi, that is an excellent card, but it requires that the stolen creature be sacrificed immediately, and it is also a one-time effect, and I am seeking a repeatable effect.

I think that I shall replace Angrath with Captivating Crew in my red/white/black deck, as that deck already has two sacrifice outlets in the form of Butcher of the Horde and Immersturm Predator, but, as for my red/green/black deck, I have actually found several cards that would work for it, which I shall compile into a list.

Sacrifice Outlets Show

That is an impressive list of creatures that sacrifice other creatures, so I now need to decide which of them I shall put into my deck; does anyone here have any suggestions?

HalbrechtHalbrecht on BLACK ZOMBIE

3 years ago

I love Zombies! Probably one of the first tribes that got me interested in tribal decks, after I saw the power of my friend's Zombie deck. +1 from me just for Zombies!

Question 0: Before we can offer any meaningful help, we need to know if you truly mean this to be a deck for the Modern format? Or will it be casual and you won't care about format that much?

(As an aside, when I first started Magic and joined T/O, I didn't really understand that Modern was a competitive format and I just labeled any deck that could be legal in Modern as Modern. LoL. Pretty sure some of my decks on T/O still mistakenly have Modern set when really they should be Casual!)

I'm going to offer my advice assuming you want it to be Modern, but if you're going more for a casual build, then feel free to ignore some of this.

First, the deck is trying to do too many things — zombie tribal, self-mill, graveyard recursion, graveyard exiling, "swamps matter", tokens, devotion — some of which don't really complement each other. If you want to streamline it for Modern, you'll have to choose a more focused direction.

I would remove the "swamps matter" subtheme, as you don't really have ways to dump extra swamps onto the battlefield nor do you take full advantage of it (where is Defile for example?). Korlash might be worth keeping, since he's a zombie, but get rid of both Nightmare and Squelching Leeches, as they're not even zombies and they're on the higher end of CMC. Personally, I'd get rid of Lashwrithe as well, but if you really love the card and want to keep it, at least you can equip that to a zombie.

Then I would choose between full-on zombie tribal including tokens, or devotion and recursion. Neither of the latter play nicely with tokens, which don't have mana costs for devotion or stay in the graveyard for recursion. A few incidental tokens are fine, but cards like Moan of the Unhallowed and Shamble Back are not synergistic at all with devotion/recursion.

Next, are you more interested in recurring your graveyard or exiling it for tokens? I.e. do you want to do Ghoulraiser, Gravecrawler, Lord of the Undead, etc., or do you want to do Cemetery Reaper, Graveyard Marshal, Tymaret, etc.? You can't do both. Personally, I'd go the recursion route, add more ways to sac your zombies for value, and cycle them in and out of the graveyard at will.

So in summary, I would go with 1) zombie aggro including tokens, or 2) zombie recursion, with a subtheme of devotion for Gray Merchant. Going either route, I'd cut Nightmare, Leeches, Lashwrithe, and Tymaret (he's not a zombie, and provides only inefficient graveyard hate). If you go route 2, I'd also cut the sorceries Moan and Shamble. That's at minimum 8 cards out. What you add depends on which game plan you choose.

You're missing some other great zombie lords: Death Baron, Lord of the Accursed, Undead Warchief, and even Risen Executioner. While not a creature, Graf Harvest gives them all menace.

Relentless Dead and Unbreathing Horde are difficult to get rid of, the former because it can easily come back to hand (and bring a friend), the latter because of his damage prevention clause.

Graveborn Muse can provide some serious card advantage. Geralf's Messenger is amazing for devotion, he drains a little himself, and he's hard to get rid of.

If you go the route of cycling your zombies in and out of your graveyard, consider Undead Augur, Plague Belcher, and Quest for the Gravelord.

In place of Cemetery Recruitment, I'd run Ghoulcaller's Chant or Unearth. The latter is particularly good if you cut all your 4+ CMC creatures except for Gray Merchant (so aside from the cards I said to cut under "Game Plan", you'd also cut Korlash and Sidisi, which I think are good cuts anyways).

You didn't label this deck as "budget", so if you can afford it, Cavern of Souls is a must-include land in any tribal deck.

I don't like Sands of Delirium. It's only function is self-mill and there's more efficient ways to do self-mill. You also currently don't take full advantage of self-mill, with things like Dredge or Flashback-style effects. If you go full force into graveyard synergies, then self-mill is important, but even then, I'd play Stitcher's Supplier over Sands. For 1 mana, you can easily get 6 cards into your graveyard, and you can easily recur him, and he's a zombie that can attack. That would take 9 mana with Sands, which is just a dead artifact.

Lastly, some sacrifice options: Gnawing Zombie isn't amazing, but the effect is relevant. I would replace Sign in Blood with Village Rites — same card draw, but one less mana, instant speed, and no life loss. You also have cards that like to die, like Festering Mummy, Black Cat, Tattered Mummy, and the above-mentioned Stitcher's Supplier.

Sorry for the wall of text. I just love zombies! So I hope at least something in there was useful.

PaulMuadDib on Vito, Thorn of Dusk Rose

3 years ago

You are going to need more than 12 lands. Whenever I build a deck, I always start with 40 lands and then for every 3 pieces of ramp, which for a mono black deck would be a mana rock or swamp doubler or ritual spell like Dark Ritual, I remove a land.
Please retune the deck with 12 non-land mana sources and 36 swamps for starters and you can think of non-swamp lands you want to include later.
My suggestions for those sources are any 12 of the following, depending on your budget:
Sol Ring
Star Compass
Commander's Sphere
Crypt Ghast
Charcoal Diamond
Soldevi Adnate
Songs of the Damned
Worn Powerstone
Dark Ritual
Everflowing Chalice
Ashnod's Altar
Cathodion
Guardian Idol
Hedron Archive
Mind Stone
Magnifying Glass
Millikin
Prismatic Lens
Cabal Coffers <- could replace a swamp
Bubbling Muck
Pristine Talisman <- defiantly want that

After that you've got the commander, which takes up 1 card slot, so that leaves you with 51 cards to choose from.

I see the bare beginnings of either an aristocrats or a reanimator deck. In my opinion you should push more for aristocrats. It can draw you tons of cards and gain you quite a lot of life. There's no harm in keeping some reanimation spells in there though.

You want a good number of sacrifice outlets. I haven't heard of what a hard number should be so I'd shoot for at least 5. Here's a list of some that I remember off hand:
Witch's Cauldron
Vampiric Rites
Ashnod's Altar
Infernal Tribute <- has a funny synergy with Spine of Ish Sah
Gnawing Zombie
Altar of Dementia
Attrition
Blood Bairn
Bloodflow Connoisseur
Bloodsoaked Altar
Bloodthrone Vampire
Carnage Altar
Carrion Feeder
Corpse Blockade
Culling Dais
Dark Privilege
Diamond Valley
Disciple of Griselbrand
Gutless Ghoul
Lampad of Death's Vigil
Mind Slash
Spawning Pit
Phyrexian Plaguelord

For this strategy you'll need recurring creatures or token generators
Ghoulcaller Gisa
Reassembling Skeleton
Endless Cockroaches
Tenacious Dead
Nim Devourer
Bridge from Below
Open the Graves
Sanitarium Skeleton
Gravecrawler

value
Pitiless Plunderer
Bolas's Citadel

Lifegain
Blood Artist is a staple
Plunge into Darkness is something you might want for the pure lifegain of 3 per creature you sacrifice. Not sure that you want to use the "exile a bunch of your deck" too often.
Bontu's Monument
Corrupt
Drain Life
Shadows of the Past

reanimation
Living Death
No Rest for the Wicked
Sepulchral Primordial
Zombify
Rise from the Grave
Victimize
Apprentice Necromancer
Call of the Death-Dweller

spot removal/board wipes
Mutilate
Damnation
Defile
Hero's Downfall
Vona's Hunger

draw
Read the Bones
Sign in Blood
Damnable Pact
Smothering Abomination
Ransack the Lab
Minions' Murmurs
Harvester of Souls

and so forth. I'd look through some already built aristocrats decks to see exactly whether you want to take that strategy.

Oh yeah, for utility lands I'd choose any of the following within your price range:
Leechridden Swamp
Bojuka Bog
Reliquary Tower
Cabal Stronghold
Volrath's Stronghold
Phyrexian Tower
Myriad Landscape
Terrain Generator
Geier Reach Sanitarium

Xenerai on Zombinstein

3 years ago

if this deck is for casual then i'd say its pretty alright for a fun break from the norm. Only 10 cards short of a commander deck too if you want to go that route. But if you're looking for more competitiveness, I'd say to do the following:

The first thing we need to do before anything, is to figure out the strategy we're going for. Obviously a token based liliana deck is way out of reasonable budgets. The blue you added does give me an idea for a control based zombie deck.

So the first thing to do is remove the cards above 60 that we wouldn't need, along with cards that will don't either assist or protect our strategies. I would start by removing the following: 2 - Advanced Stitchwing. 2 - Certain Death. 1 - Collective Brutality. 1 - Corrupt. 1 - Corrupted Roots. 2 - Disentomb. 1 - Doom Blade. 1 - Essence Harvest. 1 - Gnawing Zombie. 1 - Grixis Slavedriver. 1 - Grixis Grimblade. 1 - Hunted Ghoul. 1 - Haunted Dead. 3 - Ingenious Skaab. 4 - Laboratory Brute. 1 - Lamplighter of Selhoff. 1 - Maalfeld Twins. 2 - Macabre Waltz. 2 - Midnight Recovery. 1 - Mistvein Borderpost. 1 - Moan of the Unhallowed. 2 - Paranoid Delusions. 1 - Polluted Dead. 2 - Psychic Strike. 1 - Recover. 1 - Rise from the Grave. 1 - Scrapskin Drake. 1 - Shambling Attendants. 1 - Sibsig Host. 1 - Sibsig Muckdraggers. 1 - Sidisi's Pet. 1 - Sip of Hemlock. 1 - Skinrender. 1 - Spineless Thug. 1 - Stitched Mangler. 2 - Thraben Foulbloods. 1 - Strange Augmentation. 1 - Undead Executioner. 1 - Zombie Outlander. 15 - Swamp. 10 - Island.

It IS Quite a lot, but it's because we need to make room for the cards that'll make the bulk of our strategy, not to mention there are cheaper, better alternatives to most of these cards (lands were removed because the mana base will be changed later). With these cards taken out, that leaves us with the following: 3 - Cemetery Recruitment. 1 - Ghastly Conscription. 1 - Sign in Blood. 1 - Graf Harvest. 1 - Rooftop Storm. 2 - Gavony Unhallowed. 1 - Jhessian Zombies. 1 - Vedalken Ghoul.

these are pretty linearly focused for an effective strategy. to fluff out the rest of the cards for the deck, I'd recommend:

+1 - Cemetery Recruitment. +3 - Sign in Blood. +4 - Mana Leak. +3 - Duress. +3 - Vedalken Ghoul. +3 - Jhessian Zombies. +1 - Rooftop Storm. +4 - Go for the Throat. +4 - Rotting Rats. +3 - Claim / Fame.

paarre on List of Bugs and Feature …

4 years ago

In playtest, the following cards shows up as black cards.

Daggerfella on Mono Black Pauper Zombies

5 years ago

Gattison

That would actually go good into the deck, however I think that I would like to keep Nameless Inversion, as I can get it back because its a changeling, thus its a zombie card by technicality.

but bringing it up does make me think, I already have lifegain via Gnawing Zombie and may want to opt to Remove the Gutless Ghoul and in the sideboard for the 2xTragic Slip in order to put in 2x Dash Hopes into the mainboard.

5 damage to an opponent and the possibility of stopping them late game AND being able to get back a spell that pumps my creatures by +3/+3 might be a good idea to include both.

Daggerfella on Unsure on Upgrade, mono black …

5 years ago

Not entirely sure how to upgrade this deck: Mono Black Pauper Zombies

I am thinking of mostly changing the sideboard by removing the 2x Cuombajj Witches with 2x Tortured Existence and replacing the Sylvok Lifestaff with a Infernal Caretaker.

In longer games im thinking of sideboarding the Cemetery Recruitment for the Infernal Caretaker

Not sure what else to replace, maybe the Sign in Blood with 1x Cemetery Recruitment and 1x Gnawing Zombie, maybe put in some Tattered Mummy in somewhere

Each of these that were at 1 in the main board are all cards id consider sideboarding out depending on the situation Duress, Tortured Existence, Choking Sands... etc

What are your thoughts on this? Are their cards that would be good in this that I havent considered?

Please send me any suggestions as this is my oldest pauper deck i own and probably the weakest one i own.

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