Need Help. Competitive Blue Black Zombies.
Modern Deck Help forum
Posted on Jan. 22, 2018, 8:26 p.m. by LordNeely
So I am trying to make my Blue-Black Zombie deck competitive for Modern but i cant get it up to par with other competitive modern decks. any thoughts? should i scrap it? what should I change?
Oloro_Magic says... #3
First off you really need better removal, Fatal Push is the best choice and then maybe a couple Dismember.
The problem with trying to make this deck competitive is that to make something competitive in modern you really need to spend money. In an agro deck like this you really want 4x Aether Vial and 4x Mutavault and 4x Cavern of Souls in the mana base.
Prized Amalgam can go from this list in my opinion, it lends itself to a more graveyard oriented deck, either Death Baron, Lord of the Accursed, Cryptbreaker, or Dread Wanderer can easily slot into that spot. To that same effect Gisa and Geralf and The Scarab God in my opinion can be removed for these more aggressive cards.
Zombies itself is not a very competitive deck, it suffers from a rough sideboard and not having access to the interaction of Merfolk and other tribal decks playing Collected Company. A solid enough agro package with vial though can be competitive however and in my opinion that is the best way to take the deck.
January 22, 2018 9:13 p.m.
What Oloro_Magic said about zombies in modern. It's not really a competitive tribe. However, I disagree on loading up on lords and hoping that will do the trick. After all, the thing you get with zombies is free zombies (where elves have mana, merfolk have lord, and so on - zombies crawl back for free).
What I've understood from other who have played zombies is that 2 Diregraf Colossus are nice to have, but you wouldn't want any more. Relentless Dead is one of the key cards to gaining advantage. And since you can play a pile of things from your graveyard, Prized Amalgam stays. Oh, and Fleshbag Marauder is removal spell and zombie together. As it is a zombie, you might occasionally be able to recur it. Also, as everyone else has said, switch from Murder to Fatal Push - casting cost matters a lot for competitive decks.
A couple of cards you could let go: Quest for the Gravelord. You can't trigger it early enough for it to be a real threat. Liliana's Reaver could go, as it costs 4 mana but is hit by all removal in the format. Compelling Deterrence is not really as strong as 1-cmc discard spells are - just get those Inquisition of Kozileks or Thoughtseizes instead, discarding the best card from your opponents opening hand is arguably the best thing to do in modern on turn 1 of any game. Butcher Ghoul is simply underpowered. Yes, yes, it's resilient to removal, but who in their right mind would target it with a Lightning Bolt, knowing that it would just come back and now be... a black Grizzly Bear? The Scarab God is expensive in mana and therefore late. Only really does something, if you already have a lot of zombies (and then you're already winning). For that necromancer splash, I would ditch Gisa and Geralf in favour of Liliana, Heretical Healer
Flip. For games that go on forever, she is pretty good since she also interacts with your opponents hand.
pretzels says... #2
Add Tragic Slip, maybe one Liliana, the Last Hope? Some Go for the Throat
January 22, 2018 9:10 p.m.