MTG Salvation

[DICE][/DICE]An aggressive zombie deck that utilizes creature sacrifice to Voltron the Thraximundar and other big mean zombies, such as Deathbringer Thoctar. Cards such as Call to the Grave, Grave Pact, Syphon Flesh, Killing Wave, Innocent Blood, Barter in Blood and, of course, Thraximundar keep opponents sac'ing their creatures.

A major combo is Gravecrawler and Rooftop Storm. If these two can be fielded together with any other zombie, then Gravecrawler becomes the perfect sac engine, which can power Altar of Dementia into an infinite mill combo. Even without Rooftop Storm, the cheaper/token zombies can be sac'd to activate many triggered abilities and brought back using a number of return to hand/play cards (or in Gravecrawler's case, as a mana sink).

Suggestions welcome!


What follows if a break down by purpose (with CMC beside)


Suggestions are really appreciated.

I'm definitely going to have to disagree with Knautschke about tutors and artifact ramp. 6 tutors (especially with 2 of them being creatures...also i don't call grave defiler a tutor) is hardly overdoing it. I've had decks with 15+ tutors. There's a point where it gets excessive unless you're going for a single combo, but 6 tutors is well within the bounds of reason. Besides, you'd be an idiot to leave out vampiric tutor. Although I do agree that diabolic intent is not a bad idea.

Artifact-ramp wise, 7 is also not that bad. Very few people run shatterstorm (that new one might see play, but we'll see), and although of course o-stone and the like kill artifact ramp, everything's got its weakness. 7 pieces is hardly a major risk. Also I'd definitely run signets and talismans over medallions any day in 3 color. obelisk is pretty lame, though. I'd get another talisman or signet instead.

Quote from Knautschke

I think that the more your deck relies on a very certain combo, the more tutors are required. And Thraximunder is not "I need a specific combo to get it going" deck. So it doesn't require many tutors, but can replace tutors with cards that care for card advantages instead. They will most likely dig up any piece you can combo with Thrax as well, in addition to other stuff.

Six cards of a hundred doesn't sound much. But if you substract the lands, the commander, the mana acceleration, the beaters and what not, then suddenly you realize that having six more tools or not is a huge difference.

As always, this is just my personal opinion (what with playing Commander since it exists, having played hundreds of games and built 30 to 50 decks).

Well sure, in fact if you subtract all the cards, you realize that six cards is more than YOUR ENTIRE DECK! You can keep subtracting, but then you're getting into negative numbers, which is just a little silly if you ask me. Don't know if I believe in negative numbers myself. Although I know some do, and I support their right to choose.

I know some people would argue that having more, increasingly mediocre, tools isn't really very helpful if you don't have a way to get them reliably, and that vampiric tutor is one of the best cards in the format, and they might point out that there are several combos in this deck that might be a lot easier to pull together with a decent number of tutors instead of drawing and hoping for the best, and that discounting the ability to search for mana accel when sol ring can be tutored for is ridiculous...but luckily for us, arguments aren't decided by logic, but by how many games we can claim we've played, and you've made the wise move of picking a moderately large number, so I think we're safe. Although I once knew a man who claimed he'd play a "kajillion" games, so hopefully he doesn't show up.

Quote from Knautschke

I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. So I'm not sure why you react with mockery, only because you have a different opinion.

But, since I'm already replying: you say that, if a person doesn't add at least half a dozen tutors to a deck, said person is forced to add mediocre tools instead. That doesn't make any sense. The cardpool for Commander is very very large, and so is the toolbox you can pick powerful tools from.

What I meant with the number thing is following: On the first glance, it sounds as if six card slots ain't a lot, when the deck is 100 cards large. But a huge portion of the cards can't replaced just with tutors. Taking out six lands and add six tutors? You can throw your deck on the dump already. In other words: each and every card counts. And the more cards you add, that, by themselves, don't do anything, the less overall tools you got to work with. By adding more and more tutors, you reduce the chance to draw what you might want anyway, making you again dependant on more tutors. The swords to plowshares I tutor I might have just drawn if I wouldn't have added that tutor. That's why I think that a few tutors are necessary, but that a lot of people use too many tutors. So I'm a fan of using cards, that generate pure card advantage instead, giving me a hand full of stuff to work with.

I never said vampiric tutor is bad. But for decks that are no combo decks, I prefer demonic tutor, since it gives you the stuff right now and then, and doesn't cause card disadvantage. And I think that diabolic intent is more fitting to the deck than vampiric, because it's more into the theme.

I really did the mockery thing because once I started writing it I thought it was funny and could't help myself. But really - bringing up your record as if that's evidence of your point? That's just tacky.

As for the discussion at hand, I'm fine with cutting some of the junkier tutors in here - grave defiler is pretty awful, and beseech and diabolic are merely decent. demonic is obvious, and diabolic intent I think is a fine choice for this deck, although I'd pick vampiric over it in most circumstances. At any rate I'd consider those 3 to be definite includes. The power level drops off pretty dramatically after that (exception of imperial seal, but that tends to be a budget issue), so I think 3 might be a good place to quit if you want a fast deck. If you're going for a slower deck, increasing ambition and demonic collusion can be pretty nasty too, or that m13 one.

Thing is, there's a lot of minor combos in here (lots of them involving gravecrawler) so being able to consistently get those pieces can make those actually worthwhile instead of a waste of cards - for example, deadapult is pretty bad without gravecrawler, or at least lich lord or endless ranks. There's also lots of situationally effective cards - endless ranks of the dead sucks without having a decent board position already, whereas zombie apocalypse sucks if you haven't lost many zombies yet, and there's other conditions for plenty of cards. A tutor will always be whatever card is most useful at the time, so it's never a dead draw (only exception being if you need a card THIS TURN and you get a vampiric tutor or similar). You don't want a beater when you need an answer, and you don't want to stall drawing answers when you need to be attacking. Even with simple beatsticks, you don't want them out of tempo - lightning reaver is going to be a pretty lame draw if people are already casting eldrazi and heading towards the endgame.

Besides that, it's fairly obvious that power levels aren't really equal in EDH...I'd way rather have 4 consecrated sphinxes than 1 consecrated sphinx and 1 each of whatever the 58-60th best cards are, for instance, regardless of the turn. And it'd be ridiculous to complain about losing 1 card to vamp tutor when sphinx can draw you 8 by your next turn.

It's funny because I know a lot of people naysayed the effectiveness of vamp tutor when it was released, and it turned out to be ridiculously powerful and got banned everywhere. Never discount the power of a good tutor.

It's also true that this deck doesn't have enough draw power, so I'd advocate for that too. There's so much powerhouse draw in UB, you'd be crazy not to use some.

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions (and ensuing argument ;)).

You both had a lot of very good suggestions, and I will start working on both of them! I'm a new user on the forums, and relatively new to magic, so I really appreciate both of your comments. I have many of the cards that you both mentioned (sometimes in other decks) but I am planning a revamp of all my decks (tear apart the weaker of the six to pump of the strong three).

I'll come back here to make updates in the near future.

After a long hiatus, I made some sweeping changes to the board after rearranging some decks.

In the process of adding more protection (updates soon) but also put in some graveyard recursion via Reanimate and Victimize. Going to be picking up a Buried Alive and Dread Return to recur my new It That Betrays. Also going to pick up Lightning Greaves Swiftfoot Boots and Sword of Vengeance to protect my big beaters

This deck is being retired for spare parts. Fare thee well zombie horde.