An army marched. It marched without hunger or exhaustion, without pause for rest. When a marcher fell, they were left in the mud, ground to paste beneath the feet of their fellows. Not a single one objected or complained. Those weaknesses were behind them now. At the head of their column rode a man with sunken cheeks and a still-glorious mane of hair despite the rot and blood that caked it close to his skull. His steed was a once-mighty warhorse whose hide had been mostly peeled away by decay, leaving it a walking sculpture of muscle and bone. Every step flexed its flanks and caused flecks to drop away, wearing it down stride by stride."
~
Too relentless to succumb to the peaceful finality of death and too unquiet to rest, shambling corpses rise from the grave fresh with decrepitude and an insatiable craving to snuff out the living. Zombies are an undying, mindless plague that reawaken stripped of their humanity. They are embodiments of horror that leave a grim trail of carnage in their wake. Although incalculably numerous in scale, zombies act as a single entity, united in their sole motivation to sate their grave hunger.
Across Innistrad death-obsessed maniacs feud like petulant children over necrotic superiority. Ghoulcallers scour graveyards to raise new bodies for their growing armies of the dammed. Stitchers- part butcher and part surgeon- jolt life into their mad experiments: unholy beings merged of scrap and sinew. Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver is a new player in this game. A burly, hulking zombie himself, Wilhelt is singularly obsessed with amassing an undead army large enough to bury all others. While these factions tend fight unilaterally against each other, their hellbent zombie hordes are far more equitable: all shall perish.
BRRRAAIIIINNNSS....
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With the unique “Decayed” mechanic (Diregraf Horde, Flip the Switch, etc.) your deck will seemingly never run out of bodies. Decayed zombies may not be able to block and they can only attack once before decomposing, but what they lack in staying power they make up for in sheer numbers. Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver will keep your army from dwindling by salvaging your regular zombies, replacing them with decayed ones as they fall. Decayed zombies are prime fodder to be utilized for cards like Cryptbreaker or Mob, or sacrificed by other creatures like Grimgrin, Corpse-Born.
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The graveyard isn’t the permanent resting place for your zombies: it's just the beginning! Let the bodies pile up by sending cards directly from your deck to the graveyard (Heirloom Mirror
, Ransack the Lab, etc.) and then bring them back with cards like Relentless Dead. Some cards like Gravecrawler and Prized Amalgam can drag themselves back, and others such as Ghouls' Night Out can even reanimate opponents’ fallen creatures!
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Beyond reanimating zombies, you can also manipulate your graveyard in other ways. Havengul Runebinder for example can exile unnecessary cards to power up your Zombies, and Nephalia Moondrakes can exile itself from the grave to give all of your Zombies flying for a devastatingly unexpected attack from the sky. With Desecrated Tomb on the field, the act of exiling or reanimating cards from your graveyard will also bring forth bats, and the more cards you have in your grave the more useful the cards like Unbreathing Horde and Diregraf Captain become.
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Human necromancers exist in the deck to unearth even more chaos. Unleash your inner mad scientist with Stitcher Geralf as you stitch together new zombies with fresh parts you harvest with his effect, or raise a formidable zombie legion with his twisted sister: Ghoulcaller Gisa. Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia will ensure that you always have a (not so) fresh corpse around to serve in your deadly dealings.
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Many cards in the deck like Archghoul of Thraben and Headless Rider profit off your zombies dying, allowing you to make the most of sacrificing cards with Wilhelt, Fell Stinger, and others. Given enough time to function, Crowded Crypt and Ghoulish Procession will blow open the graves and unleash a horde of decayed zombies to either take over the field or be sacrificed for further value.
Sub-Commander Option
Gisa and Geralf: These insane twins are themselves at the epicenter of Innistrad’s gruesome zombie feud, but when they manage to put their heads together they can raise the most hellish zombie armies built to last just long enough to snuff out any trace of the living before turning them on each other.
With Gisa and Geralf as your commander, zombie tokens and sacrificing creatures are less important, with Decayed being rendered largely irrelevant. As a tradeoff, you can freely cast zombies from your graveyard once per turn, making milling and discard effects invaluable. You’ll be drawing less cards without Wilhelt, but your graveyard can ultimately act as your second hand. The deck becomes slow and resilient with the ability to recycle key creatures, much in contrast with Wihelt’s precarious high-risk high-reward strategy of sacrificing creatures to generate value.
Part of a 5-way Innistrad Pentagram/ Commander series:
1) Leinore’s Witching Hour- Humans assemble to outlive opponents, escalating in formability and bolstering their ranks.
2) Saint Traft's Lost Army- Spirits and Angels attack effortlessly from above to slowly grind opponents to the bone.
3) Wilhelt's Graveyard Smash- Zombies rise from the grave to overwhelm opponents, entirely overrunning the field.
4) Florian's Sanguine Soiree- Vampires strengthen themselves and swarm the field to strike opponents when they're vulnerable.
5) Tovolar's Full Moon Slaughter- Werewolves transform to butcher opponents and curse them to manipulate the state of the game.
