Dual Deck: Zombie Sphinx

Casual Sphinx Tokens UB (Dimir) Zombie

Tryptic

Creature (29)

• 1x Arbiter of the Ideal
• 1x Dazzling Sphinx
• 1x Geralf, Visionary Stitcher
• 1x Gisa and Geralf
• 2x Gleaming Overseer
• 4x Gravecrawler
• 1x Gravespawn Sovereign
• 1x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
• 2x Plague Belcher
• 1x Serum Sovereign
• 1x Sphinx Ambassador
• 2x Sphinx of Foresight
• 2x Sphinx of the Second Sun
• 1x The Scarab God
• 2x Twisted Abomination
• 2x Undead Warchief
• 1x Unesh, Criosphinx Sovereign
• 2x Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator
• 1x Windreader Sphinx

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Dreadhorde Invasion
• 1x Endless Ranks of the Dead
• 1x Free-for-All
• 1x Necroduality

Artifact (5)

• 3x Maskwood Nexus
• 2x Throne of the Grim Captain  ^Flip

Land (19)

• 4x Dimir Aqueduct
• 6x Island
• 7x Swamp
• 2x Undercity Sewers

Sorcery (4)

• 4x Persist

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Maybeboard

Creature (1)

• 1x Phyrexian Plaguelord

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Dual Decks

Dual decks are my attempt to create a series of interesting casual decks, designed to be played against each other. The twist is that each dech is built using two separate creature tribes, and tied together with Maskwood Nexus which gives all creature types to all of your creatures. Each deck aims to show off both the strengths of its tribes, as well as a few famous MtG combo mechanics used in unusual ways. Each Dual deck is 61 cards, with the last card being an Un-card or playtest series card which is added for silliness, and can be removed if you prefer.

You can find my full set of Dual Decks here!

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Summary

Zombies and Sphinxes may not seem like they have much in common, but they actually share an appreciation for the joy of flight, and of not being dead. This deck has plenty of fun reanimation targets to come out on turn 3 with Persist.

Opening hands

Any hand with Persist and a big Sphinx is a good starting hand. It's often in your best interest to skip the turn 1 Gravecrawler and play a turn 2 Dimir Aqueduct so you can discard a creature due to hand limit. Even without an Aqueduct, you can skip your Turn 2 land drop to set up the discard and Persist.

Combo Mechanic: Reanimation

The deck contains reanimation and graveyard filling abilities for both the early and late game. Persist can't target legendary creatures, but the creatures you can get tend to give a lot of card advantage

Combo Mechanic: Upkeep Triggers

Sphinx of the Second Sun doubles a lot of good upkeep triggers, from The Scarab God to Endless Ranks of the Dead. Taking an extra turn with Lost Isle Calling and two upkeeps each turn is often enough to win on the spot.

Small combo: Persist + Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator

Vohar is a surprisingly great Persist enabler: he draws cards, puts your target in graveyard, and can become a second Persist. Or, he can become the first Persist that you unfortunately milled.

Small combo: Gravecrawler + Grimgrin, Corpse-Born + Necroduality

A quick way to get many, many zombie tokens.

Final combo: Endless Ranks of the Dead + Sphinx of the Second Sun + The Scarab God

This will very quickly turn into too many upkeep triggers for your opponents to handle. And when you're scrying half your deck, it's easy to get a second Sphinx out for good measure.

Un-card: Free-for-All

A rather strange "board wipe", play this when you've got a Sphinx ready to come out and you'll get twice as many creatures back. Note that you'll need to roll dice or something for the random cards, since they weren't thinking of card sleeves when they designed this. Or maybe your group decides to let people choose the card based on the sleeves, whatever works for you!

Date added	3 months
Last updated	1 month
Key combos	Persist + Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator Gravecrawler + Lost Isle Calling + Viscera Seer Endless Ranks of the Dead + Sphinx of the Second Sun + The Scarab God
Legality	This deck is Casual legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 28 - 0 Rares 6 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons
Cards	61
Avg. CMC	3.83
Tokens	Copy Clone, Shapeshifter 2/2 U, Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie Army 0/0 B, Zombie X/X U
Folders	Dual Decks