Working Title: The Zombies Who Don't Do Anything.
Most zombies are known for the voracious appetite and relentless attack. Not these zombies, no siree.
Perhaps Jace decided to take a course in Necromancy, as these zombies are here for keeping him (and you) safe while he works his milling magic. For the purposes of this deck, the Zombies exist solely for defense, and use their return capabilities simply to just get back up for more blows to the face.
Let's break this deck down.
The strategy here is using the combination of Undead Alchemist and Jace, Memory Adept to generate a ton of zombie tokens while milling your opponent to death. This deck has three potential wincons: Mill to death as explained above, Using Ratchet Bomb to kill all your zombie tokens and using Diregraf Captain's ability to kill your opponent's life, or (in a really rare pinch) using Ratchet Bomb to kill Undead Alchemist and swinging with a fuckton of zombie tokens against a player you can't mill.
Ideal Opening Hand: 1 Tainted Isle, 1 Swamp, 1 Jace, Memory Adept, 1 Undead Alchemist, 1 Cryptbreaker, 1 Relentless Dead.
Turn One: Land comes first. Preferably, you'll have a swamp and a cryptbreaker in hand to immediately start putting down some defense, but the most important thing here is dropping land.
Turn Two: Drop another land of either color. If you have a Relentless Zombie (and the mana available), put him down.
Turn Three: Moar Land if you got it, preferably an Island or a Tainted Isle if you don't have any blue yet. Use your mana as per what's available in your hand - Got a Serum Vision or a Ponder? Go fishing in your deck for any of your wincons. Got another card:Relentless Zombie or a Diregraf Captain in your hand? Plop him down to discourage potential creature attacks. The most important thing to do in turn three (besides throw down more land potentially), is to ensure your game winning pieces are in your hand OR to build up your meat shield. If you're hand has nothing of utility (excess lands, an extra Jace, etc.), use a Cryptbreaker to clear that dead card and put a 2/2 zombie token onto play. They're great in a pinch for blocking just about anything that might come your way, and the more cards that are in your graveyard, the faster your Stitch Together becomes supercharged.
Turn Four: Drop land if you got it. Same as Turn Three, build the zombie meat shield and/or Ponder important cards into your hand. If you have an Undead Alchemist in your hand, now's prime time to put him down. Keep him in alive at all costs, he's not here for meatshielding.
Turn Five: Drop land, especially a Nephalia Drownyard if you haven't already. Dropping the Drownyard allows us to start milling and potentially token genning if the Undead Alchemist is in play. Keep your meatshield strong! Beefy creatures are probably gathering at your door at this point, and we really don't need those thinning our zombie herd yet. If something important (i.e. Undead Alchemist) gets sent to the graveyard, don't fret just yet, just make sure you have a relentless zombie or a stitch together prepared for bringing him back. If the coast is clear, and Alchemist is in play, Jace can potentially enter the ring now. Use his +0 ability to pull 10 cards from your opponent, and hopefully get even more meatshields in the process. If you don't have a Jace yet, you can also use Drownyard's ability to pull three cards off your opponent's library in tandem with Alchemist's passive ability.
Turn Six: If you haven't got Jace yet, stay meaty. Keep your Alchemist alive and use whatever means necessary to get tokens (Attack only as a last resort. Your zombies are the only thing keeping you alive while you're scrambling to get those missing pieces). Hopefully, if you have all the pieces you need in play, you can just keep milling your opponent and getting even more tokens.'
Turn Seven: If you've got enough zombie tokens and a Diregraf Captain out, now might be a good time to pull out Ratchet Bomb. We have no interest in charging that bomb, turn immediately detonate it with zero counters. This will pop all our token zombies, activating Diregraf Captain's second ability to kill an opponent. Be smart, though - only do this if you're certain your blast will kill the opponent, as your blast won't wipe the board and will leave you mostly defenseless.
If you can't do this, just keep milling. The more milling you do, the stronger your zombie wall gets and the fewer your opponent's options become.
Turns Eight and Above: If you're still alive at this point, and your zombie wall is holding strong, you should be able to just ride the wave comfortably and mill your opponent out of existence or prep that zomb bomb for an instakill.
Miscellania
If you need a zombie to come back to your hand, Relentless Dead is typically going to be your best option, as losing him can not only bring him back to your hand for one Black Mana, but you can also return any zombie card in the graveyard to your hand for the price of its CMC. Likewise, Stitch Together will do the job for two Black Mana, and if you've got at least 7 cards in your graveyard, it'll send it right back to the battlefield at no further cost to you.
Depending on your opponent, you have 4 Counterspells in your sideboard to adapt to their playstyle. We expect to be going up against creatures in a deck, and if you ever run across something really stompy or deadly to your zombie wall, a good Victim of Night should take it out no problem. However, if your opponent is creatureless or relies on instants/sorceries to do their dirty work, you can swap out as many Victim of Nights as you need to counter that problem.
