Undead Augur

Creature — Zombie Wizard

Whenever this or another Zombie you control dies (is put into the graveyard from the battlefield, tokens are put into the graveyard before they cease to exist), you draw a card and you lose 1 life.

Combos

• Liliana, Dreadhorde General + Undead Augur

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
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (44)

Zenntrox on Zombo Combo

4 months ago

Love the combo of this deck!

I've been tinkering with a zombie sacrifice deck myself and I got a few recommendations that might be helpful:

Ayara, First of Locthwain could probably be replaced with Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat (the later being slightly worse, but also cheaper to buy irl). They all do functionally pretty much the same, but Ayara is more expensive with her 3 mana cost. So you might as well replace her unless you absolutely feel like you need that option to sac for her card draw or might have a reason to prefer the damage on creatures entering the battlefield rather than dying.

Headless Rider honestly doesn't feel like it's doing very much in this deck. As far as I understand it, the main wincons are either dealing damage through Ayara's ability or milling via the Altar of Dementia. Creating tokens just feels unnecessary and having more draw to get to your combo pieces faster is probably more useful. For example, Village Rites combos well with having disposable creatures and Undead Augur, effectively allowing you to draw 3 cards for 1 mana at instant speed.

If you don't mind your removal being sorcery speed, then you might want to give Bone Shards a try. It gives flexibility in either discarding or sacrificing for its cost and can also target plainswalkers. Finally, maybe 1 or 2 copies of Unearth could be useful as a failsafe in case important combo pieces end up in the graveyard. It can get you literally any creature from your deck back and that for just 1 mana.

TheVectornaut on Dead of Night

9 months ago

I think the biggest weakness of this deck is that it's hard to curve out early with so many of the slots occupied by cards at 3 CMC or higher. The ideal play pattern is probably to slam down Champion of the Perished on turn 1 and then follow up with a zombie or 2 every following turn until finishing with a bomb. This is difficult to do with Relentless Dead as your only 2 drop, and if you don't draw Champion, the lack of 1 drops makes things even worse. I'd recommend adding something like Gravecrawler, Diregraf Ghoul, Cryptbreaker, or Dread Wanderer to provide early pressure in the absence of a champion. Then, on 2, I personally like Undead Augur for the draw, especially paired with a sac outlet like Carrion Feeder. Other 2s could be Waste Not with a discard package, Graveyard Marshal as a lordless Cemetery Reaper, or you could dedicate the slots to cheaper removal. Invoke Despair is very flashy but seldom as efficient as a Thoughtseize or Fatal Push. On 3, you have enough cards, although I would still offer Geralf's Messenger, Diregraf Colossus, and Lord of the Accursed as other options to consider. To make room, the most obvious place to start is the bloated 6-slot, and as much as I love using him in my Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest EDH deck, Champion of Stray Souls is very slow in 60-card formats. Helm of the Host, Liliana, Dreadhorde General, and Killing Wave (without a drain package with Gray Merchant of Asphodel) also seem underwhelming to me. It should be noted that I'm using modern as the basis for my evaluation. If your local casual meta is slow enough, running more big guys isn't as big of a problem, although I'd still try for more 1s and 2s just to avoid games where you're bricked until turn 3.

wallisface on Modern Zombies

11 months ago

Some thoughts:

• Cabal Stronghold is not a good card, and i’d suggest ditching it. As its not a swamp itself, you need it and 4 swamps in play (5 lands total) just to break even. You don’t even get positive returns until you have 6 lands in play, and at that point you’re already at the top of your curve. Meanwhile, all the time before then it can’t offer black mana (only colourless), so is just going to mess with your early game tempo.

• Modern is a fast format, and has no real place for very high mana cards like Liliana, Dreadhorde General and Open the Graves - they cost too much mana, and are far too weak for the investment. I’d put Undead Warchief in this same bucket.

• You’re missing some key zombies like Carrion Feeder, Gravecrawler, and Undead Augur

• Ghoulish Procession feels very weak imo.

• Fatal Push > Feed the Swarm. Feed is a sideboard card at best.

multimedia on Cards that buff zombie tribal?

1 year ago

Zombie Master and Filth don't buff, but instead they can make your Zombies unblockable. Noxious Ghoul can wreck your opponent's creatures since it triggers each time a Zombie token is created. This effect is essentially giving your Zombies evasion since it will clear away opponent blockers.

Zombies can have an advantage using your life as a resource for repeatable draw. Cryptbreaker, Graveborn Muse, Undead Augur is Zombie tribal draw using life. Bolas's Citadel is powerful black card that uses your life which can also be a sac outlet for 10 Zombie tokens.

Augur/Dark Prophecy/Erebos, Bleak-Hearted + Blood Artist/Bastion of Remembrance/Zulaport Cutthroat pairing these cards can be a draw engine with Zombie tokens.

Plague Belcher, Vengeful Dead are Zombie tribal aristocrats and with Zombie tokens they pair well with a free activation sac outlet such as Carrion Feeder, Phyrexian Altar, Viscera Seer, Blasting Station, Ashnod's Altar.

Gravecrawler is Zombie tribal repeatable sac fodder for Gisa. Skullclamp is nice draw with tokens, when you're sacing creatures and with Gravecrawler.

soul_knightmare on Braid's killing spree

1 year ago

Recommended Includes

Mind Stone, Fellwar Stone, Arcane Signet for more ramp and remove three basic lands. You can run 37 or less

Skullclamp, Reassembling Skeleton, Treacherous Blessing, Victimize, Gray Merchant of Asphodel for more card draw and recursion and remove Cordial Vampire, Xathrid Necromancer, Bloodcrazed Paladin, Undead Augur, Maskwood Nexus, and Doomed Dissenter. They are all different tribal cards and you can't rely on seeing Maskwood Nexus every game.

If looking for long term updrades you can never go wrong with Cabal Coffers, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Black Market Connections, Bitterblossom, Crypt Ghast, and Pitiless Plunderer

Dead_Blue_ on Joe Gusfield (Rowans Deck)

1 year ago

Undead Augur in place of that 2/1 Intimidate zombie

lagotripha on Horde of the damned (budget aggro zombies)

1 year ago

My experience with budget mono black points to this being most of the way there - there are ways to reach FNM viability that won't work in tournament play due to scouting+decklist availability.

Carrion Feeder + Undead Augur is an incredible engine for black zombies - sac+discard outlets are great for the tribe thanks to tokens and recursion. Being able to sac gravecrawler to pump 2 creatures, draw cards and get tokens from headless rider is incredible value. This gives you legs that a lot of aggro strategies lack, creating a spectrum of options from pure 'make zombies smash face' to 'disrupt hand, set up cryptbreaker, draw lots'.

Mono-black's biggest advatnage is a large pool of 'good enough' cards, which become very strong when they answer meta threats. Its quite difficult to tell the difference between gravecrawler in aggro, gravecrawler in midrange with extra hand disruption/card draw, and gravecrawler/undying combo. That unpridictability wins games, if you read the FNM meta right.

The downside of this is choosing what to put in your 75 cards. Stuff like a single Bump in the Night/Soul Spike, a single Ratchet Bomb or Pithing Needle has an ovesize impact due to your opponents having to play around them. Pick carefully, and don't be scared putting options maindeck - worst case, they are gravecrawler discards. Look at how you win the matchups you expect, and build to that rather than trying to maximise damage or speed - a single duress can buy a couple extra turns hitting face in the right hand, and if everyone has the same few creatures in their hand you can reliably hit them with the cheap disruption.

If you want to spend on the deck, stick to format staples - thoughtsieze etc. Most everything else has budget cards that match its performance, especially if you need to switch up your plans to keep your edge anyway.

wallisface on Undead Augur or Relentless Dead?

1 year ago

I would say Undead Augur is the far stronger card between the two for Modern.