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An Answer to the Prayers [Zombie Tribal + Primer]

Modern Mono-Black Tribal Zombie

MikooBo


Sideboard


Primer! Zombies! Tribal!

"There will come a day so dark you will pray for death. On that day your prayers will be answered."

-Minaldra, the Vizag Atum

Welcome to the highest ranked Modern Tribal Zombie deck on tapped out!

The deck which you see here has been constantly changing and evolving over the course of the past couple of years or so, starting out as nothing other than just a pile of swamps and rares, and becoming that I'm proud to call my own.

The idea of this deck is pretty straightforward, which is in part of what makes it so brilliant and so much fun to play. Simply swarm and overwhelm your opponent, with plenty of removal to clear what you can't brute force around. No fancy gimmicks, no infinite combos, just pure unadulterated zombie carnage. Enjoy!

Well, maybe that's not true anymore. The deck is starting to become a sacrifice oriented style of play where it wins not by brute force, but by overwhelming card draw and death triggers hitting for lots of damage.

- Cryptbreaker This guy is the bombshell that gets the whole operation rolling. He's a solid turn one play that can get us a Gravecrawler into the graveyard on turn two while creating a token, and set up for a turn three Diregraf Colossus with a cheeky extra counter on him. Also great card late game for a bit of extra draw.

- Gravecrawler Easily the best aggro zombie in modern, hell I'll even bite and say in all of magic at the moment. Plus it helps that each time he gets cast, he triggers Diregraf Colossus and makes even more zombies for the horde.

- Carrion Feeder A one mana 1/1 that likes to gobble up all the nice little Gravecrawler s and spit them back out again, hitting triggers and pumping himself up at the same time.

- Undead Augur necessary because he is one of our main win-cons. He has one job in this army, and that's recruitment. Get out there and find us more zombies!

- Relentless Dead sacrifice at instant speed to return zombies that were uh... dead? back to being... well still dead, but... less... dead?

- Diregraf Colossus Is our way to create zombies en-mass. Besides this ability, which honestly would be pretty decent on its own, it also gets powered up from having zombies already in the grave and can get really bulky really fast.

- Death Baron Gives all our zombies death-touch and makes them all stronger, YAY!

- Lord of the Undead This zombie lord is great for pumping up the horde, but he also combos nicely with Nameless Inversion to constantly have removal on hand. That or to get some zombies back from the dead... again.

- Geralf's Messenger A staple in modern zombies. The ETB loss of life and the undying triggers are great as is, but when you add the fact that you can remove the +1/+1 counters on him with the Plague Belcher etb effect, your opponent will have to find a way to kill this bad boy not twice, but sometimes up three or more times before this guy actually kicks the bucket.

- Plague Belcher works here as a three drop who brings some serious power to the lineup and his additional semi combo with Geralf's Messenger is not too shabby either.

- Gray Merchant of Asphodel makes sure that we don't get too reckless and kill ourselves before we kill the opponent. A wise man indeed!

- Collective Brutality This card does a lot of work for us. It's a hand disruption card mixed with removal and some lifegain/loss. There is nothing better then discarding a Gravecrawler for free and getting the max effect that the card has to offer.

- Fatal Push So far this card has proven its worth, getting rid of most adversaries before they become a problem and for only one mana, its availible almost whenever it's needed.

- Liliana, the Last Hope While not as clear cut "remove on creature from the board" as the other Lily in the deck, Last Hope does a couple of things for us. cutting down the strength of an opponent's creature and sometimes almost outright killing them is decent, and the ability to recover creatures from our graveyard is also a plus.

- Liliana of the Veil Almost always enters the battlefield with one loyalty counter, forcing our oppenent to sac one of their creatures. While not killing off the other side's board, Lil is great at getting rid of their hands, forcing a top deck war. In a top-decking game where we can bring back our army turn after turn, we win.

- Cavern of Souls can produce and protects zombies from getting countered by things like Chalice of the Void .

- Mutavault Can turn into a zombie which is pretty cool. Just there to help out if we need a blocker or for extra aggro if we need it.

- Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx Devotion, devotion, devotion. Playing multiple zombies a turn is fun... for us at least.

- Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth Makes sure all our lands produce when we need them to.

- Swamp Produces

- Lifebane Zombie Worth running in certain matchups, but also decent as just another aggro zombie because of intimidate.

- Phyrexian Crusader same as lifebane, great in certain matchups, but solid all around anyway. plus infect/first strike is nothing to sneeze at.

- Thoughtseize Nothing too fancy here, we'll throw this card into the mix where we need some extra hand disruption.

- Surgical Extraction As with Thoughtseize , nothing too out of the ordinary. This goes in to fight against specific problem cards.

- Dismember More cheap removal to deal with threats Also gets around smaller indestructible, which is nice.

Opening Hand

Solid opening hand includes at least two sources of with preferably : x1 Cryptbreaker x1 Gravecrawler x1 Diregraf Colossus , Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx , and pretty much any of our three drops (Lily is usually preferred for removal)

Turn 1

Pretty straightforward here starting from mainboard. Drop a swamp and play Cryptbreaker . wait.

Post sideboard can set us back one turn, usually opting to cast a Thoughtseize if possible, in which case casting both Cryptbreaker and Gravecrawler on turn 2 is normal.

Turn 2

No attacks this turn, just wait patiently, play a swamp and pass the turn. Activate Cryptbreaker in response to pretty much anything discarding Gravecrawler and getting a token.

Turn 3

Play Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and unless we really need to remove something, play out Diregraf Colossus which comes in with an extra counter on him.

Turn 4

After this basic setup, which is pretty reliable to accomplish the deck takes off from here. we can now cast out our Gravecrawler getting us even more tokens, and begin to use Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and all the devotion for added effect, dropping multiple zombies a turn and building out our army.

Lather, Rinse, and Repeat until victory is secured.

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Casual

91% Competitive

Revision 16 See all

(4 years ago)

+4 Bloodstained Mire main
+4 Polluted Delta main
-8 Swamp main
Top Ranked
Date added 8 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.

Rarity (main - side)

14 - 0 Mythic Rares

27 - 11 Rares

6 - 3 Uncommons

5 - 1 Commons

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 2.15
Tokens Emblem Liliana, the Last Hope, Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie Knight 2/2 B
Folders Zombie, Zombies, Wanted decks, Zombies, Modern, Amazing Decks, Mono blacks, deck ideas, Jenk, Make this
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