MTG Salvation

When I first started playing EDH, one of the first decks I built was a zombie tribal deck with Lim-Dul the Necromancer as the main general and a rotating group of evil black legends that could take over depending on how I wanted to play. That deck eventually became my Chainer deck, The Army of Evil, which is in my sig. I'd been wanting to do a new true zombie tribal deck since then but kept thinking it would be a multi-color deck with either Grimgrin, Corpse-Born or Lord of Tresserhorn at the helm. Then low and behold, WoC throws me a curve ball and prints Ghoulcaller Gisa and all of a sudden, I'm in love all over again with a healthy dose of necrophilia!






As you can probably tell, I heavily modded the precon but left a few cards that were good for the theme and a couple that I just wanted to try out because they were new. There are a few staples that I may get, but honestly, this is my 3rd active Mono-B deck and I don't want them all to feel the same, so maybe I'll leave a few out. I'll update this with playstyle, wincons, synergies, and a maybe-board. In the meantime, feel free to offer any comments or suggestions. All input is always welcome!

Do you not have Graveborn Muse, or did you leave it out for a reason? You can (and probably should) run enough sacrifice effects to where you can control whether or not the draw is worth the life loss for you— you can either get rid of the Muse or enough Zombies to make it all work out for you. Cards like Phyrexian or Ashnod's Altar, Disciple of Griselbrand, Undercity Informer, High Market, etc. are all worth considering. They also help get more value out of the Grave Pact effects you're already running.

Rings of Brighthearth would do a lot of work in this deck.

While it's one more CMC than them, Read the Bones is significantly better than Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood, which you already run. I'd run it and Sign in Blood and leave out Night's Whisper if you only want to devote two card slots to that type of spell.

While Call to the Grave is fun and thematic, it's expensive and too easily played around.

I did leave Graveborn Muse out on purpose. While its true I can play around the downside with sac outlets, I like running the deck more aggro based, and having to sac out zombies to keep from dieing on my upkeep keeps me from having zombies to swing with on my main phase. That being said, I have a copy for play testing and plan on giving her a shot.

Phrexian Altar and High Market are one the way, I just didn't have an extra copy when I threw the deck together. Same thing with Rings of Brighthearth.

I feel the same way about Read the Bones, but I didn't have any copies and didn't think about it when I ordered some cards the other night. Great suggestion, and I'm going to get a few immediately to replace Night's Whisper in this and my other mono-B decks.

Call to the Grave you're spot on about. It's mostly a thematic placeholder until I replace it with something better. Thanx for the input!

This is relevant to my interests, as I recently acquired the Commander 2014 deck and have been toying with it. I live outside the USA so I have a much more limited card pool to choose from, though I do have a number of black and artifact "staples" in my binder.

I have used this deck list as a guide and for inspiration for the changes I am making. I love the Thornbite Staff and Nim Deathmantle ideas, and wonder if you have thought about Illusionist's Bracers? It not only doubles Gisa's activated ability, but you also have a number of other creatures which it can be attached to if Gisa isn't in play. If you are tight for deck space, it is actually better than the Thornbite Staff (in my opinion) because the Bracers work with a variety of your creatures when you don't have Gisa in play, where the Staff doesn't.

& If you're going to run Thornbite Staff, I can't see why you wouldn't at least add Vampire Nighthawk.

I feel like you're going to get manascrewed with this deck more often than not. 34 lands with just 2 mana rocks is asking for trouble, at least include 6 more, including Mind Stone, Charcoal Diamond, Coldsteel Heart, as do you really want to waste a tutor on land instead of a game winner, in addition, Coffers only works if you have a certain number of lands out.

Good list besides, however I would consider Phyrexian Reclamation and Phyrexian Dreadnaught.

EDIT: Dreadnaught isnt a zombie admittedly, but may be thematic.

Updated the main decklist. I saw Scoeri's awesome tribal decklist and realized I'd neglected this list even though it's still one of my favorite decks to play. The deck has gone through a few iterations from my last update. I moved from Gisa to Sidisi, Undead Vizier as the general for a while and basically made it a tuned combo control deck. That was fun for a couple of months much to the bane of my EDH league, but I wanted to take it back to a more pure Zombie tribal list without all the infinite combos. There's still a couple combos in the deck, but only ones that work with Zombies or Grave Titan.

It's been so long since I looked at this thread, but I'm highly considering adding in Victimize as was suggested above. What a great late Christmas present!

Blighted Fen may make it into the deck as well. I know the list could be a little more fine tuned, but I want to try and keep this one on theme as much as possible. Aside from Phyrexian Dreadnought, effectively every card in the deck is on theme with the graveyard/dark arts of necromancy. The Dreadnought is just amazing tech though getting 12 zombies for 2 mana, so it gets the exception. Some other cards I'm considering would be Zombie Trailblazer as an extra swampwalk outlet as it works without needing Urborg on the field and tokens are almost always available. There are a couple of really good utility zombies that are always on the cusp of inclusion but never make it into the deck like Plaguebearer, Withered Wretch, Shepherd of Rot, Cabal Interrogator, and Graveborn Muse. I've played with the Wretch and, while this may be a meta thing, I never really found myself needing his ability. Shepard was in the deck for a while but it backfired against me too much with the life loss. Same thing for the muse. The card draw was incredible, but this deck makes tokens so fast that the life loss can get out of control quickly without a sac outlet. One other card I've always wanted to put in the deck but could never justify the slot for is Walking Dead... It's awesomeness pretty much speaks for itself, lol.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated!

Small update to the deck...

Out:

• Swamp
  
• Coffin Queen

In:

• Westvale Abbey
  
• Relentless Dead

I found Coffin Queen mostly being used to rez from my own yard, and Relentless Dead is just bonkers in this deck. There's no real downside to playing Westvale Abbey and with this deck's token production, getting the demon out for 5 mana is effectively never a problem and always a threat.