Combos Browse all Suggest
Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Freeform | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Historic Brawl | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Modern Beyond Horizons | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Pauper Duel Commander | Legal |
| Pauper EDH | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Mummy Paramount
Creature — Zombie
Whenever another Zombie enters the battlefield under your control, Mummy Paramount gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
legendofa on The more I think about …
9 months ago
TypicalTimmy I agree with your points about why the mummies should be considered survivors. My issue is that the story pretty much never mentions them except as servant background extras, and the cards don't help. Do they fight? (Maybe, Unconventional Tactics.) Do they just keep working? (Yes, Dutiful Servants and Disposal Mummy.) Do they have any autonomy? (I guess so, loosely hinted at Mummy Paramount and confirmed in Aetherdrift Guide.) What do they do during the Phyrexian Invasion? (No idea.) Do they have any consistent description at all? (Not really.)
So now, they pretty clearly count as survivors. Before the Aetherdrift Guide, there was no real indication they had any more "survivor-ness" than simple machines; they were just another type of mindless zombie. Also, there's absolutely no description of how many mummies were destroyed in either conflict. And that's one of the things that bothers me. The number of survivors, living and mummy, is exactly "enough to make the story happen."
plakjekaas I had thought about that a little bit, but I don't know what the reproductive rates and maturity ages of the equivalent animals are, or if that's a meaningful comparison. Let's dig into this line. There are explicitly no old people in Amonkhet at any point, so nobody dies of old age. And attrition is definitely a thing, especially pre-HoD. So birth rates are presumably high just to meet replacement rate, but time spent in late pregnancy is time spent not training. On the other hand, the city of Naktamun was probably pretty close to resource capacity, even assuming the mummies don't consume any resources, so the living population was close to, if not actually, being maxed out, and HoD would push the resource cap down by a lot. As with other planes, humans seem to be the majority. Khenra are almost always birthed as twins. Humans presumably are usually going to be single birth. So that's a lot of time the human women are going to be reducing their activity (no full-contact sparring in the third trimester), and it's probably similar with the other mammal-based people. Since nagas and aven are not the majority populace of the plane, they either also have 1-2 births at a time or an extremely high mortality rate. Would a minotaur or khenra born between the wars be mature enough to fight the Phyrexians, and would one born after the Phyrexian Invasion be mature enough to help prepare a racetrack? Even if a child has been learning how to fight since they could walk, the Phyrexians were ostensibly fanatical, merciless, versatile, and physically much stronger and tougher, more than a match for an army of six-year-old humans, jackals, and cattle. Or maybe the naga and aven population is currently exploding--high birthrate, rapid maturity, low mortality--and they're going to be the majority in the future, outpopulating the mammals.
legendofa on The more I think about …
9 months ago
Dragging this back out to obsess about it some more with the release of the Planeswalker's Guide to Aetherdrift, Part 2. The city is being rebuilt with outside help, and it seems like enough living people and mummies survived to facilitate that. That answers two of my questions, but I still have no idea what the population numbers are. Either the city of Naktamun was much bigger than I assumed, the death toll of two wars was much lower than I assumed, or both.
Point 1: What counts as a survivor? Are only living people counted as survivors, or are mummies included? Grisly Survivor, Resolute Survivors, and Survivors' Encampment don’t provide many useful hints. There’s also Disposal Mummy, Dutiful Servants, Mummy Paramount, and Unraveling Mummy as the Amonkheti mummies in the Hour of Devastation set. In the 2017 online stories, there’s almost no mention of the mummies once the Hour of Devastation starts, and they don’t show up in the card art unless they’re the focus, so the number of mummies after the Hours is a complete unknown.
As a side point, there’s no real indication that the mummies of Amonkhet are independent, or even sentient, before the Aetherdrift Guide. In fact, cards like Dutiful Servants carry the implication that they are very much not self-aware, but Unconventional Tactics make that more ambiguous. In the Aetherdrift Guide, though, they suddenly demand independence and partnership, and have opinions and desires. This is the sort of detail I would have loved to see in the Amonkhet stories (and I was reading them as they came out). Even just a couple of paragraphs from a mummy’s point of view would flesh out the world that much more.
The March of the Machine story doesn’t offer anything else. The Amonkhet cards in March of the Machine are Blossoming Sands, Djeru and Hazoret, Injector Crocodile, Invasion of Amonkhet Flip, Khenra Spellspear Flip, Ruins Recluse, Sandstalker Moloch, Swamp, and Unseal the Necropolis, none of which offer too much insight.
So the number of mummies helping clear rubble and replant farms and construct a racetrack is a giant question mark. They’re simply there when they need to be and not there when they don’t. Do they count as survivors? I honestly have no idea, and that bugs me.
Point 2: How many survivors are there? The current population of Amonkhet is apparently enough to have "crowds lining the route and packing the grandstands", which to me suggests more than a few hundred, or even a few thousand. I would take this as at least tens of thousands, if not over a hundred thousand, going off typical capacities for major motor sports stadiums. This probably includes mummies as well as living people, but the total is still several orders of magnitude larger than what I would have expected.
Incidentally, I would expect the mummies—who explicitly failed the trials, usually with a major injury—to be the first ones to die. I don’t pretend to know much about invading, but cutting off supply lines seems to be pretty popular, and neither Nicol Bolas or Elesh Norn seem to have thought of that. Nicol Bolas even made sure that the people of Naktamun were entirely reliant on mummy labor, and he doesn't take advantage of that. So much for masterminds and tactical geniuses... Mummies are explicitly said to massively outnumber the living in the Aetherdrift Guide, so either Amonkhet was like 75% mummy for the Hour of Reckoning (not especially borne out by the story or cards), or they had a very low casualty rate across two invasions.
The Aetherdrift Guide includes the sentences "The Phyrexian invasion saw the deaths of tens of thousands of Amonkheti. Newly risen under the Walking Curse, these fresh undead were not eager to submit to the old order of servile mummification." I'm getting two inferences from this. First, the Phyrexians did not process, convert, or utilize tens of thousands of dead Amonkheti for whatever reason--were they immediately coated in lazotep as soon as they died?. Second, the living population of Naktamun after Hour of Devastation was at least in the tens of thousands.
So after the Accounting of Hours, there were enough living people for tens of thousands to die against Phyrexia. After Phyrexia, there were still enough survivors (probably including both living people and mummies) to form crowds of significant size to watch the Aetherdrift rally. So we’re blowing way past the 30,000 population of ancient Memphis, the most populated city in the world at its height and a major inspriastion for Naktamun. I’m not going to fault a city in a fantasy story being unrealistically big, but I would like to at least have an idea on how unrealistically big it is, besides just “big enough to support the story”.
Time to start headcanoning some numbers.
Starting with what I would consider at the upper edge of realistic, put the living and mummy population of Naktamun at 30,000 each, for a total of 60,000. Let's then assume a devastating, plane-threatening 80% mortality rate for each group, each conflict. After the Accounting of Hours, there would be 6,000 living and 6,000 mummies for a total population of 12,000. After the Phyrexian Invasion, there would be 1,200 living people and 1,200 mummies, for a total of 2,400. That could probably serve as a base to rebuild from, but it doesn't capture grandstands full of cheering crowds or Phyrexians killing tens of thousands of people.
Try some different numbers. Now, the initial total population of Naktamun is 3,000,000. Of that, let's say 2,000,000 were mummy servants and 1,000,000 were living soldiers in constant training. (This is still very high, given the apparent technology and appearance of the city.) Let's further say that there was a 50% casualty rate among the living and 25% casualty rate among the mummies for each major conflict. After the Accounting of Hours, there would be 1,500,000 mummies and 500,000 living. After the Phyrexian Invasion, there would be 1,125,000 mummies and 250,000 living. That feels too high for a city struggling to keep itself alive.
Tweaking numbers until I'm happy. 400,000 mummies; 150,000 living; 550,000 total. 60% casualty rate for both groups, each conflict. After HoD, there would be 160,000 mummies and 60,000 living survivors. After Phyrexia, there would be 64,000 mummies and 24,000 living survivors. That feels pretty okay to me. Mummies outnumber the living by about a 3:1 ratio, the Phyrexians could have killed tens of thousands of people, and there's still enough for crowds to fill grandstands and line racetracks, assuming it's mostly mummies.
On other notes from the previous discussion, there’s still no real word on where Crested Sunmare came from, which is interesting, and the “Death Race” set does go through Amonkhet.
Also... (spoilers) Show
MutaliskLord4 on
Varina Zombie Midrange [7]
6 years ago
This will sound bad, but you will want cheap, mediocre zombies. Dread Wanderer and Stitcher's Supplier have slightly niche abilities, but having zombies low on your curve is key to allowing you to abuse Varina's amazing card filtering ability. For 2-drops, Blood Scrivener , Graveyard Marshal , Metallic Mimic , Mummy Paramount , Nightscape Familiar , Relentless Dead , Wight of Precinct Six and Withered Wretch all have some decent abilities. Some of them are just efficient beaters, while others serve as reanimation, lords, token production, card draw and ramp, as well as graveyard hate, which is very important to have in an edh deck. Here is my list if you want to check it out.
Chuckles24 on
7 years ago
Thanks for the suggestions ChristopherP! The most likely thing to come out for Mummy Paramount is Binding Mummy, but I feel Binding Mummy is better. It taps down blockers and it can tap down attackers on your opponents turn, if you use Graveyard Marshal’s ability before declare attackers. It’s an opinion call though. I agree with you on Demon of Catastrophes and I’ve changed them to Liliana, Untouched By Death. She is just a better card.
ChristopherP on
7 years ago
Love the deck. I have been testing with a deck like this. Try using Mummy Paramount for that extra quick ramp. Don't know what to take out though. Demon of Catastrophes is a good card, however, it feels out of place with everything else.
razelfark on
Black/White
7 years ago
Cards I would try to remove from deck because you either lack cards to support them or are just on the weak side:
Embraal Bruiser: lack of artifacts
Graceful Cat: not very strong for its mana cost
Mummy Paramount: lack of zombies to trigger effect
Ruthless Sniper: lack of cycling cards to trigger
Queen's Bay Soldier: there is a white 2 drop that is the same thing but has lifelink (Bishop's Soldier). Would use that over this.
Anointer Priest: not enough token spawning cards. Would maybe keep if you play a set of Oketra's Monument.
Liliana's Defeat: strong vs black, but best not to run cards like this in a mainboard because you never know if your match up will make use of this card from the start.
Getting more of Gifted Aetherborn would help a lot likely.
If possible you may want to also use Walk the Plank unless your friends are playing merfolks.
Hope these suggestions are helpful. Tried to make suggestions that would not brake the bank. Its a nice deck you have there for making it out of a builders kit.
SpiritKing on
8 years ago
Often when you start out it might be hard to really focus on a thing in decks. What catches my eye is that you have multiple things you want to do with your creatures in your graveyard and some of them are anti-synergistic/not efficient enough with what you want the deck overall to do (as far as i can tell). You seem to want to create a critical mass of zombies and/or tokens to aggro your opponent out of the game, while getting value out of Zombie Tribal synergies and through Eternalize/Embalm by basically getting two creatures out of one card.
To that end (aggro out an opponent) you can either focus more on token creation or up the number of "Lord" effects aka cards that give a certain creature type a +1/+1-boost.
Since i presume you want to keep the Blue for The Scarab God i suggest adding some Diregraf Captain which act as Lords and further hurt your opponent for killing your creatures and some number of Liliana's Mastery to create more zombie tokens and as a +1/+1 boost on an enchantment (it's harder to remove for your opponent than a creature).
Other cards you might want are cheap aggressive creatures, preferably with some kind of evasion that makes them hard to block. I think Cursed Minotaur is an option you might want to add, others would include Binding Mummy to tap down blockers, Mummy Paramount which can grow pretty big, Tattered Mummy which works well with Diregraf Captain, Wayward Servant to gain life back and of course the good ol' Diregraf Ghoul.Also Time to Reflect is wonderful in Zombie Tribal Decks.
If you want to explore the Eternalize/Embalm road some more, Sunscourge Champion and Miasmic Mummy would be great additions, since Champion can eternalize pretty early, can gain back life and both can dump somthing with Embalm/Eternalize into your graveyard. Ghoulraiser can be pretty good here as well, since he only get's back a Zombie and leaves your Eternalize/Embalm creatures in your graveyard to use them.
Whatever direction you want to evolve this into, i's strongly suggest to get a second The Scarab God even if it is pretty expensive at the moment, but it does so much for zombie decks. Perhaps wait some more until the price drops a bit?
Other suggestions i have is to look up cards from all the Innistrad sets (the new and the old) as well as Shards of Alara cards that have Unearth.
Also, since The Scarab God can basically rebuy your creatures, everything with an "enters/leaves the battlefield" ability is especially good with him.
I hope i could help you out a bit!
nurzaani on Need help cutting cards for …
8 years ago
I decided recently that I want to get back into the game. I bought a pack of Amonkhet and got Anointed Procession and this card alone seemed fun. Then during a Draft the week before last I ended up playing with a Mummy Paramount , which I ended up drafting a playset of and [card:Binding Mummy] which I got 2 of. And Lord of the Accursed and ended up having fun and decided I want to make a zombie token deck that works around Anointed Procession. If the two mummies I mentioned cant work with it, then it is fine. But I do want to keep the Anointed Procession in with it. I'm having trouble figuring out what to cut because I have too many cards. Also maybe suggestions for sideboard and mainboard. I have a few cards in my maybe board that I am not sure about. not sure what/how many I should put in a sideboard though. Here is the Deck:
B/W Zombie tokens
Standard*
10 VIEWS
Thank You.