Zombo Combo

Commander / EDH Combo Tribal Zombie

ragnar_ok

Instant (2)

• 1x Corpse Dance
• 1x Cyclonic Rift

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Army of the Damned
• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Increasing Ambition
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Patriarch's Bidding
• 1x Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1x Zombie Apocalypse

Enchantment (11)

• 1x Attrition
• 1x Black Market
• 1x Call to the Grave
• 1x Dark Prophecy
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Endless Ranks of the Dead
• 1x Grave Betrayal
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Infernal Tribute
• 1x Opposition
• 1x Rooftop Storm

Artifact (10)

• 1x Coldsteel Heart
• 1x Commander's Sphere
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Grimoire of the Dead
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Liliana, the Last Hope
• 1x Liliana Vess

Creature (28)

• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Bone Dancer
• 1x Coffin Queen
• 1x Corpse Harvester
• 1x Cryptbreaker
• 1x Diregraf Captain
• 1x Fatestitcher
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Geth, Lord of the Vault
• 1x Ghoulcaller Gisa
• 1x Gisa and Geralf
• 1x Grave Titan
• 1x Graveborn Muse
• 1x Gravecrawler
• 1x Gravespawn Sovereign
• 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1x Havengul Lich
• 1x Lord of the Undead
• 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1x Noxious Ghoul
• 1x Phyrexian Delver
• 1x Relentless Dead
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1x Thassa, God of the Sea
• 1x Undead Warchief
• 1x Vengeful Dead
• 1x Withered Wretch
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Land (38)

• 1x Bad River
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Choked Estuary
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkwater Catacombs
• 1x Dimir Aqueduct
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 5x Island
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Submerged Boneyard
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 11x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Unholy Grotto
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vivid Creek
• 1x Vivid Marsh
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Winding Canyons

Commander (1)

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Sideboard

Creature (1)

• 1x Diregraf Colossus

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The Goal

The main goal for this deck is to combo out, draining my opponents' life via a sacrifice/recursion engine.

Plan B

Plan B for this deck is to win via combat. This could be through commander damage, or a horde of zombies too large for opponents to block.

Card By Card

Life Drain

These cards are the ones you'll rely on most for Plan A (the combo kill). If one of these cards (with the exception of Gary -- see the explanation below) is on the battlefield when you get a sacrifice/recursion engine online, then it will kill all of your opponents. If these are not available, the combo kill won't work, and you'll need to resort to combat. Also of note: if an opponent somehow has hexproof, then you can't use most of these cards to kill them.

• Blood Artist: Any time a creature dies (yours or an opponent's), it drains an opponent for one.

• Diregraf Captain: Similar to Blood Artist, but only triggers when a Zombie you control dies. That restriction shouldn't be a problem, because most of the time, you're trying to trigger these effects by sacrificing your own Zombies. This also gives your Zombies +1/+1, which helps when executing Plan B (win through combat).

• Gray Merchant of Asphodel: My friend Gary here is the best life drain card in the game, as long as you're set up to take advantage of him. He's good enough if you can get him on the battlefield once, and absolutely crippling if you can bring him back. This card isn't like the others in this category, as it doesn't trigger when something dies. But if you have a free sacrifice outlet and can recur this card on the cheap (say, with Phyrexian Altar, Rooftop Storm, and Havengul Lich), then it's game over. Gary doesn't target, so he gets around opponents having hexproof, too.

• Vengeful Dead: This one makes your opponent lose life when any Zombie (yours or your opponent's) dies. This deck has very few creatures whose deaths won't trigger this card. Sure, you don't gain life, but if you're using this card properly, you don't care.

• Zulaport Cutthroat: Drains an opponent for one whenever one of your creatures dies. Similar to Diregraf Captain, this is a restriction that shouldn't matter most of the time.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice your creatures for fun and profit! This is a key part of the sacrifice/recur/drain combo. You can tell by the way I just used the word when describing the combo. Basically, you want to sacrifice your stuff either to get other stuff, or (more likely) so you can trigger those sweet, sweet enters-the-battlefield effects again and again.

Ghoulcaller Gisa: Gisa lets you sacrifice creatures to get more Zombie tokens. Sure, she only lets you do it once per turn cycle, but she does give you more things you can sacrifice, or block with, or both.

Grimgrin, Corpse-Born: The commander of this deck is an ever-present, free sacrifice outlet. He gets a counter and untaps when you do it, and you get whatever other effects you'd get from any other sac outlet.

Fleshbag Marauder: A sacrifice outlet in a pinch, or more likely, you're using it to get rid of that one opponent's only creature. And if you can recur it cheaply, you can start machine-gunning your opponents' dudes.

Infernal Tribute: It costs a bit to sacrifice things with this (two mana each time ain't that cheap), but you do get a card for your effort. And this one can get rid of non-creatures if you really need to. Maybe you need to get rid of a Dark Prophecy in response to an opponent's board wipe, to avoid getting decked.

Phyrexian Altar: The classic free sacrifice outlet. Sacrifice a Gravecrawler to get the to cast it from the grave. Then do it again. And again. And again. Or maybe if you're really lucky, you also have a Rooftop Storm so you can use the mana to do something else while replaying the Gravecrawler for free.

Graveyard Recursion

The real key to this deck is getting things back from your graveyard, or sometimes stealing something from an opponent's graveyard.

Bone Dancer: Dancin' on bones and takin' names. Well, takin' stuff from the opponent's grave. But this has to get through unblocked to be able to do it. Not easy, but worth the payoff if you can pull it off.

Coffin Queen: Steal one thing at a time from any graveyard. If you can manage to recur something for value, and then sacrifice it, you can use the Queen again after it untaps to do it all over again.

Corpse Dance: Get the top creature from your graveyard back for a turn, and buyback so you can use the Corpse Dance again. If you want the creature back again later, be sure to sacrifice it before the Corpse Dance exile trigger resolves.

Geth, Lord of the Vault: Steals a key creature from an opponent's graveyard, and puts more stuff into that graveyard so you have more fodder to do it all over again.

Gisa and Geralf: Puts some cards (hopefully Zombie creature cards) into your graveyard, and lets you get one Zombie back from your grave every turn. Repeatable recursion, and a little setup to start it off.

Grave Betrayal: If you can manage to kill your opponents' non-token creatures, you get them on your side of the field for free. It's an expensive card at 7 mana, but worth it, especially combined with cards like Grave Pact.

Gravespawn Sovereign: If you can get 5 Zombies on the battlefield, including this, then you can get a creature from any graveyard just by tapping those 5. Cheap and repeatable.

Grimoire of the Dead: Takes some time to set up, but this can fill your grave with creatures, and then grab all creatures from all graveyards for you.

Havengul Lich: One mana for the ability to cast a creature from any graveyard. The other ability (to temporarily give the Lich the activated abilities of that creature) is largely unimportant in this deck, but hey, you never know. Your opponent might be playing something with an activated ability you really, really want right now.

Living Death: You should be able to set up your graveyard to make this more beneficial to you than your opponent. If that's the case, this is almost a board wipe, combined with a "reanimate everything you have" spell.

Lord of the Undead: The static pump isn't the important part here. The important part is the ability to pull a Zombie from the grave into your hand to replay.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed: This isn't actually recursion, just a bit of resilience along with a way to re-trigger those enters-the-battlefield abilities we love so much.

Nim Deathmantle: Sure, you have to keep the mana up to do this at the right time, but you can bring a dying creature back to life with this. This goes well with the ability Winding Canyons gives you to play creatures at instant speed.

Patriarch's Bidding: You're probably set up better for this than anyone else. Enjoy the mass recursion of a billion creatures while your opponents get two or three each.

Phyrexian Delver: Costs you a bit of life to get a creature back, but that shouldn't matter too much if you've already been draining your opponent.

Relentless Dead: You need to have the mana up right when this dies, but if you do, this can recur both itself and one other Zombie. Goes well with cheap sacrifice outlets, and full-bodied red wines.

Rise of the Dark Realms: Everyone's stuff is yours. All yours.

Unholy Grotto and Volrath's Stronghold: Puts creatures on top of your library from your graveyard. If you can combine this with a card draw effect, you get it immediately instead.

Zombie Apocalypse: Gets all of your Zombies back, and might take out a Human or two. Just be careful not to kill your own Ghoulcaller Gisa or Zulaport Cutthroat if you need them and can't recur them yet.

Tutors

It's all well and good to have combos in your deck, but if they're not available, they're not much good to you, are they?

Buried Alive: Grab three creatures to stock your graveyard for recursion effects. Goes very well with Sidisi, Undead Vizier, to have her tutor up your non-creature combo pieces.

Increasing Ambition: A tutor that doesn't mind being milled. Flashback is a wonderful thing. Doubly wonderful, in this case.

Liliana Vess: You can tutor whatever card you want, to the top of your deck. Combine with card draw to get it into your hand. Liliana also has a couple of other modes (target player discards, and reanimate all creatures onto your side of the battlefield), but let's be honest: she's not here for those, and they'll very rarely happen.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier: Combine this with recursion (or Mikaeus, the Unhallowed) to tutor up many things from your deck. She's a combo player's best friend.

Mana and Cheating Costs

Ramp and cost reduction, together again.

Black Market: Things die, you get more mana every turn. It's a good deal, especially when you're probably going to get those dead things back.

Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: The classic two-land combo for tons of mana. Even better if you can untap the coffers to get even more mana, maybe with a Fatestitcher.

Coldsteel Heart, Commander's Sphere, Dimir Signet, Sol Ring, Talisman of Dominance: Mana rocks, a planeswalker's best friend. Mana rocks are forever. Other diamond slogans.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: There are a lot of symbols in this deck. Grave Pact and Infernal Tribute are good on their own, but Nykthos can give them an extra purpose.

Rooftop Storm: You want free Zombies? You got 'em. Then sac 'em, get 'em back, and cast 'em for free again.

Undead Warchief: A nominal P/T buff for your Zombies, and it makes them cheaper too.

Removal

Attrition: Taking out an opponent's creature is a good reason to start sacrificing your own. Trade a Zombie token for an opponent's bomb, a few times if you're lucky.

Black Sun's Zenith: This safety valve will take care of your opponents' creatures unless they have something like Melira, Sylvok Outcast. Otherwise, it will shrink all creatures until they cease to exist. And if you have something like Blood Artist on the table, it can take a whole lot of life from your opponents at the same time.

Call to the Grave: You don't want to cast this if you're relying heavily on a Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, or Gisa and Geralf, but in most other circumstances this will hit your opponents much harder than it will hit you.

Cyclonic Rift: The best blue removal spell in the game, as far as I'm concerned. No reason not to play it in this deck.

Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact: If you lose a creature, so do your opponents. With so many sacrifice outlets and so much recursion in the deck, these cards will let you decimate your opponents' board.

Noxious Ghoul: Shrinks creatures when your stuff dies. It's not the most powerful effect in small doses, but you can sacrifice a lot of stuff. And you do have to be careful with your non-Zombies, if you care about them at the moment.

Opposition: Effectively removes a permanent for the turn, for each creature you tap. Keeps you alive while you find your combo pieces, or helps your creatures get through if it's time to go for the win through combat.

Card Draw

This deck has a lot of tutoring and incidental card draw, so you don't need a lot of dedicated card draw. But what's here is pretty powerful in this deck.

Dark Prophecy: One of your creatures dies, you get a card and lose a life. Just remember that it's mandatory. You could lose enough life or draw enough cards to lose the game. Be prepared to sacrifice this to Infernal Tribute in that case, but otherwise, enjoy your cards.

Graveborn Muse: More mandatory card draw and life loss. If you have so many Zombies that you'd kill yourself, sacrifice the Muse quickly.

Evasion and Protection

You won't always be able to pull off the combo win. Sometimes you have to resort to combat, and these cards will help you do that.

Rogue's Passage: Makes a creature unblockable. With how big your commander can get, you might be able to one-shot an opponent this way.

Swiftfoot Boots: Hexproof can protect your more important creatures (like Grimgrin). The haste granted by this equipment frankly isn't that important.

Thassa, God of the Sea: Scrying on your upkeep is good, and making your creatures unblockable is sometimes better. This can get a lot of creatures through, limited only by your mana (specifically blue mana).

Whispersilk Cloak: Equipment that gives shroud and unblockable? It's Grimgrin's bestest buddy.

Winding Canyons: One of these things is not like the others...well, casting your creatures at the last possible moment, at instant speed, can help protect them from sorcery-speed removal for a turn. Sometimes a turn is all you need.

The Zombie Horde

These things don't really fit into any of the other categories. Some are token producers, some are role-players. All are food for the combo monster.

Army of the Damned: Twenty-six Zombies for...I'll admit it, a lot of mana. But if the mana train is rolling, it can sometimes be pretty easy to do.

Cryptbreaker: This puts something in the graveyard for your recursion engines, and gets you a 2/2.

Endless Ranks of the Dead: Once you have some Zombies, hey, have some more Zombies! Sometimes this is win-more, but sometimes it gives you necessary sacrifice fodder or attackers.

Fatestitcher: There are lots of things that you'd like to do twice. Tap Cabal Coffers for a butt-load of mana, tutor again with Corpse Harvester, pop that Grimoire of the Dead a little bit faster. Or just untap a land to get one more mana to cast Rooftop Storm.

Grave Titan: Not a Zombie itself, but it's an easy way to make them.

Gravecrawler: Public enemy #1 for combo haters. It's so easy to recur this card that you don't want to play it until you have a sacrifice outlet to protect it from exile. You might also want to have Winding Canyons out to protect it from graveyard hate.

Liliana, the Last Hope: She can shrink a creature, fill your graveyard, and make tokens. She slices, she dices, she taunts your opponents with her utility.

Withered Wretch: Straightforward graveyard hate. You won't always need this, but when you do...something something Dos Equis.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	7 years
Exclude colors	WRG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	16 - 0 Mythic Rares 41 - 1 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.89
Tokens	Emblem Liliana, the Last Hope, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Potential decks, zombies