pie chart

Gisa and Geralf: Siblings of Self-Mill

Commander / EDH Combo Mill UB (Dimir) Zombie

MegaMatt13


Gisa and Geralf like to experiment with dead corpses...nothing strange about that, right? They use their necromancy skills to raise a never ending stream of zombies. This deck often takes opponents by surprise since self-mill is such a counterintuitive strategy. It's focused on throwing cards into the graveyard to be reanimated with Living Death, Zombie Apocalypse, Patriarch's Bidding, Twilight's Call or Rise of the Dark Realms. Click on the dropdown menus for more info and please upvote if you like it!

Card Draw

Most of the card draw in the deck involves "looting" or "rummaging" effects: drawing cards and then discarding some (or vice versa). We WANT zombies in the graveyard and these cards help us get them there.

Frantic Search, Ancient Excavation, Fact or Fiction, Fortune's Favor , Monastery Siege, Forbidden Alchemy, Geier Reach Sanitarium, Necromancer's Stockpile, and Forgotten Creation all involve drawing and discarding.

Cryptbreaker and Gempalm Polluter involve zombie-based card draw and are also on theme with the deck.

Self-Mill

One of the quickest ways to get zombies into the grave is through milling the library.

Mesmeric Orb has become the biggest mill engine in the deck. It can mill everyone for crazy amounts of cards. It's a very nice set up for mass graveyard recursion.

Perpetual Timepiece allows for self-mill every turn. Plus it can prevent us from decking ourselves.

Geralf's Mindcrusher, Wailing Ghoul , Armored Skaab , and Laboratory Brute are zombies that mimic our commander's ability

Nephalia Drownyard is a utility land that let us self-mill.

Necromancer's Stockpile, and Cryptbreaker turn discard into zombie tokens.

Buried Alive and Corpse Connoisseur let us tutor for zombies to toss into the graveyard.

Altar of Dementia when not used in combo can help us to fill our graveyard too.

Blue and Black are excellent control colours and I wanted to take advantage of this. Counterspell, Dissipate, Swan Song and Negate for countering threats.

Hero's Downfall for instant speed removal.

Toxic Deluge, Living Death and Life's Finale for boardwipes.

Custodi Lich for a forced sacrifice effect (and some card draw).

Fleshbag Marauder is a repeatable edict effect in this deck.

Grimgrin, Corpse-Born removes a threat every time he attacks.

The deck contains a few key win conditions which provide enough versatility if one gets shut down:

1) The most common way to win is to fill the graveyard with zombies as quickly as possible and then cast Zombie Apocalypse, Living Death, Twilight's Call, Patriarch's Bidding, or Rise of the Dark Realms. With all of the card draw in the deck, it is actually quite easy to cycle to these cards. If you accidentally mill these win conditions, Pull from the Deep and Call to Mind help recur them. Once the zombie army is reanimated you win either through ETB triggers (like Gray Merchant of Asphodel) or by swinging wide.

2) Gravecrawler + Rooftop Storm + Altar of Dementia + any other zombie: This makes an infinite combo of casting Gravecrawler for free from the graveyard and sacrificing to the Altar of Dementia to mill out opponents.

3) Gravecrawler + Rooftop Storm + Vengeful Dead/Diregraf Captain + Sac Outlet: Repeatedly sacrifice and cast Gravecrawler for free to infinitely ping opponents to death.

Suggestions

Updates Add

As I suspected, Liliana's price has gone down considerably. I've picked up a copy of Liliana, Death's Majesty and thrown her in. She self-mills, creates zombie tokens, reanimates creatures, and can be a one-sided boardwipe (though getting to ultimate might be rare). This is all stuff the deck wants to do. I've taken out Dread Summons. Flavourful card but too variable. Sometimes it would kinda whiff based on how much mana I was pumping into it.

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Hi! Please consider becoming a supporter of TappedOut for $3/mo. Thanks!


Important! Formatting tipsComment Tutorialmarkdown syntax

Please login to comment

Revision 34 See all

(5 years ago)

Top Ranked
  • Achieved #8 position overall 7 years ago
Date added 7 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

7 - 0 Mythic Rares

33 - 0 Rares

21 - 0 Uncommons

16 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.53
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, The Monarch, Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie Wizard 1/1 UB
Folders Commander decks, Interesting (Others' decks), Deck Ideas, Edh, Decks to consider, Commander Decks, edh, EDH Deck Ideas, Decks of Interest - EDH, Gisa Self Mill Zombies
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views