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| Format | Legality |
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| Vintage | Legal |
Unraveling Mummy
Creature — Zombie
: Target attacking Zombie gains lifelink until end of turn.
: Target attacking Zombie gains deathtouch until end of turn.
legendofa on The more I think about …
1 week 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
DynamicSushi on
Life is Pain, So is Death
4 years ago
Commander_Olim I have not thought about Unraveling Mummy! Sounds like a great card to include. I will have to proxy it to see what it can do.
Commander_Olim on
Life is Pain, So is Death
4 years ago
Have you thought about Unraveling Mummy? Could be a nice include.
ANemoAcids on
5 years ago
Hero of Leina Tower and Unraveling Mummy looked quite promising too I thought. They were my first choices so far.
Jaysterbaby on Need help with ZOMBIE EDH …
6 years ago
I have 128 cards and trying to knock it down to 100, would like some help makes a good Zombie deck. Thank you for your time and help. Here are my cards
Commander - Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
[100 cards]
17x Swamp
Liliana, Heretical Healer Flip
[28 cards]
jon.grimes893 on
Of Life and Death - Zombie Deck
6 years ago
18 Lands is absurdly low, even for aggro decks. You'll want 22-24 in a aggro/midrange deck like this.
As far as under performing cards, I recommend removing God-Pharaoh's Faithful, Those Who Serve, Unraveling Mummy, and all of the artifacts in the deck. To a lesser extent, Lord of the Accursed typically under performs, unless the first one lives through the turn and you can drop a second one right after.
I suggest adding 4 Dread Wanderer, 2 more Plague Belchers, 2 more Binding Mummies. Also, 4 Liliana's Mastery is too good to pass up. After the first resolves, it puts down 6/6 worth of stats and pumps all your other zombies as well. If you play a second one, it adds 8/8 worth of stats to the board and your other zombies have +2/+2.
Hyperalgialysis on
Mono white zombie aggro
6 years ago
The best way to upgrade this will be to add black. Unfortunately, the lack of a white zombie lord, Lord of the Accursed Liliana's Mastery for example make the deck lack some beef that zombie decks typically rely on. I would add both of Wayward Servant Unraveling Mummy as well as any of the rare black zombies in standard. If you do this, you can also add some more removal that is black, as well as have things like Duress for the sideboard.