Are you tired of boring old blue decks that don't seem to do anything except stop you from having fun, combo out or just screw you over repeatedly?
Do you love zombies? Well I hope you do as I've almost perfected the perfect monoblue zombie deck archetype and I am very eager to show you all just how to copy this type of zombie build. So rather than the typical build of a monoblue deck revolving around "goodstuff", "counter control" 75% of all the cards within this deck revolve around zombies, dead stuff and cards that work with the madness mechanic.
Before I go too far deep, this is also a Primer for those who want to make a monoblue zombie deck. The secret revolves around both of the stitchwings and Geralf's Masterpiece and their ability to cause you to discard cards. Those 3 main cards and other madness cards are at the very heart of this deck.
1. Black tribal zombie decks have many zombie lords while there is only one blue zombie lord- and he's blue black. (Yes there are a few artifact creature lords but I never added any of them to this decklist as I felt that I didn't need them.) So with a mono blue deck you'd need to find other ways to buff up your zombies.
2. Boardwiping and reanimating is key for black tribal zombie decks which blue lacks. There are a few cards that do both but they are only a handful of cards that are really only a one time use- hardly of use for this kind of a deck that likes to reanimate all creatures in the graveyard. So reanimating is pretty much out for blue outside of Nim Deathmantle.
3. Milling/ Exiling is more prevalent to blue than to black decks and with certain creatures this is how zombie tokens are created (think Sidisi, Ghave or Animar. Black in contrast does very little milling by itself.
(EDIT: After extensive games- plus with some cards from the Shadows over Innistrad block, I have found some excellent and amazing creatures that either want to be milled or want to activated/ cast from the graveyard.)
4. Blue shenanigans. Black doesn't have the ability or the capacity outside of cards like Vedalken Orrery to compete with what Blue decks normally do. So in this case, Blue is stronger than Black in which I have heavily invested. So when making this deck, I have included a few counter-spells and alot of card drawing as it needs this just like every other blue deck HOWEVER, remember that the point of this deck (and to a lesser extent all mono-blue zombie decks) is to create zombie tokens and to support them however possible.
Overall, from what I've figured out and have understood is that to make zombie tribal for Stitcher Geralf forget about reanimating, zombie lords and focus on milling yourself for card advantage, answers and for creatures. Geralf is quite good as he focuses on exiling and milling to make one huge zombie. HOWEVER this will most likely make you a target and will probably cost you the game. So whatever you do, only exile creature cards milled by him whenever you need to and not to go gung-ho crazy trying to make as many zombies as possible. I have found out that by doing so, you'll be hated out of a game. So when playing this particular general, take it nice and easy and don't go all crazy with milling- either for others or yourself as you could mill away cards you would rather have in your hand.
To complicate things, he is mono-blue which does not support the usual methods for a zombie deck: massive boardwipes, reanimation, and for keeping zombies safe from being exiled with sac outlets. So for that, we'd have to look to cards like Eldrazi monument which makes our creatures indestructible at the cost of having to sac 1 creature at the beginning of our upkeep.
So to sum up and simply this sort of strategy for tribal blue zombies, exile threats to make huge zombies and then give them indestructibility to keep them safe. After that, it's probably best to give them trample and lifelink while giving your general the ability to untap so you can abuse his ability.
Lastly for storm, narset and other creatureless decks don't worry about having to exile your own guys because as I've found out, half of all the mono blue zombies you can only cast by exiling creatures from your own graveyard and are mostly not useful. So exiling them and other fodder- mana dorks and creatures that fill roles like drawing cards or potentially countering spells should be exiled.
Lastly some of the blue zombies come with undying which is awesome. Those guys you shouldn't be so quick to exile from the graveyard as blue has almost no graveyard redundancy or recursion.
EDIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is important. Right now, I stumbled upon a pretty big secret on how to make this kind of zombie deck work right. With cards like Advanced Stitchwing that require me discard 2 cards to "reanimate" him have basically changed the deck from the old zombies that require "a creature to be exiled from my graveyard in addition to their cast" to discarding.
Combine discarding, some new sweet madness cards that came out from Eldritch Moon, and cards with sweet abilities that you can activate from your graveyard when milled have completely changed half of the way this deck functions. Will post up new deck list in a few days when I'm off next.
