Selecting the right rotting corpses to get the job done wasn’t easy. Multiple factors had to be weighed. We need zombies on curve; we need good utility from our undead; we need some sort of Win-Con. It took a bit of perusing through the plentiful number of Modern legal Redeads (
Shrieeeeeeeek!!) but I settled on what I feel to be an effective cavalcade of the recently disinterred. In ascending order we have:
•
Gravecrawler
, our 1 drop, is one of my all time favorite MtG creatures. Absolutely brilliant design behind this little guy. He’ll see the most use early on, but we’ll be sure to see him again, and again, and again...
•If the opponent thought our 1 drop overstayed his welcome, wait until they meet our 2 drop.
Relentless Dead
, master of the “pop-in”, will make Cosmo Kramer seem antisocial. News gets worse for the opponent—
Relentless Dead
’s friends start to pick up his bad habits. Not only does our 2 drop have recursive abilities, but he can bestow that gift to any of our other zombies.
•We start to bring out the big guns when
Diregraf Captain
hits the table. This lord comes replete with Deathtouch, buffs all of our other zombies with an extra +1/+1, and starts to put the hurt on with his 3rd characteristic—whenever any of our zombies dies, including being sacrificed (!), our opponent will lose 1 life. As we’ll soon see, that life loss will start to add up quickly.
•For our 4 drop I’ve decided to go with
Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
. Depending on how we’re situated for land, this guy can come out BIG. Oh, and he regenerates. Oh, and drawing a second or third copy will make a big impact on the boardstate. Grandeur, indeed.
Great art on this card, either version—it makes me long for the days before WotC pledged devotion to the religion of Magic Marker & Microsoft Paint :(
•At last we come to our resident alpha zombie,
Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
. Again, this artwork is a sight to behold. The biggest, baddest zombie in our deck comes with some strict baggage, but it won’t be an issue for us. We want to sacrifice our recursive weaklings to fuel Grimgrin’s insatiable appetite. With
Diregraf Captain
afield each sacrifice drains the opponent’s life pool, all the while inflating Grimgrin’s power and toughness. Then when he attacks we get the privilege of eradicating a creature of our choice on the spot—while placing yet another +1/+1 counter on our general. Insult; meet injury.
By this time we’ll have a boardstate boasting a collection of cadaverous cohorts able to inflict damage a variety of ways, and with varying levels of potency. With Grimgrin leading the charge, we should be able to overwhelm the opponent.