The Commander’s Chair – Zombie Infestation

The entries are in and a winner has been chosen for The Mimeoplasm’s zombie challenge. Before we get to the winner, I want to cover some ground on zombies in Commander and how to make them good.Whenever you build any Commander deck, you need to choose a path to take for victory. Just making a tribal deck isn’t going to make your deck a force to be rockened with. Before you even start putting the list for your deck together you should have a clear idea of how you want to knock other players out of the game.One of the cards I was really hoping to see decks built around was Rooftop Storm.

While a half dozen contestants used Rooftop Storm in their deck, I was saddened not to see the one interaction with Rooftop Storm I believed I was going to see in multiple decks.

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All three of these cards could conceivable let you use Rooftop Storm to win by using actual storm spells. I was a little sad to see no decks that used Tendrils of Agony as a win condition.The interaction that several contestants did pick up on was the interaction I hinted out in the last article. That is of course the interaction Rooftop Storm has with either Future Sight or Magus of the Future. It lets you play zombies off of the top of your library. Using cards like Cream of the Crop and Sensei’s Divining Top you should be able to rearrange you library and put a large number of the undead horde into play with few issue.

Now, the cards that turn this from a great interaction to a broken interaction are cards that let you go from playing a lot of cards to giving you another way to have an infinite storm count.

There are a few more zombie centered combos that bled in relatively seamlessly into the Mimeoplasm deck.

This combo takes a bit of green mana to really pull off. Mass reanimation is always a cool trick to pull off and the plays usually win games. Living
Death and Grimoire
of
the
Dead both work as possible replacements to Balthor.

Any Sacrifice outlet works in place of Grimgrin, but he is a zombie that doubles as a win condition, so he is my preferred sacrifice outlet. My favorite creature to sacrifice in these situations is easily Grave Titan, since it will provide you with a massive zombie army.

Just in case you are having a lazy day I will walk you through this one. Sacrifice both his zombies to add {4} to your mana pool. Then, Sacrifice him. Before you get the {2} mana, you trigger the Deathmantle. Pay to bring him back into play and you still have {2} mana floating. From now on, you can just sac one zombie and the Grave Titan leaving one additional Zombie for each cycle of sacrifices. This can all be done at instant speed, so you can do it at the end of your opponents’ turns. If you choose to do it on your turn you can also net infinite colorless mana in addition to the army of zombies. I hope this gives you some inspiration for what you can include in future zombie decks and what to look for when making tribal decks that can stand toe to toe with non-tribal decks.Alright, enough of my ramblings. If you are reading this article, then you probably want to know which deck won the Mimeoplasm Zombie contest. Here it is;

http://deck.tk/5xUz38b3

Congratulations to Emma Labelle. Her deck contained great zombie synergies and played to the strengths of a BUG deck. I hope she puts the Mimeoplasm to good use. Thank you everyone for participating in the contest. I had a lot of fun judging the entries. I hope you alll had a good time writing up the lists. If you would like individual feedback on your submission, send me and email and I can give as much feedback as you like. I will be playing Commander all week at worlds, so be on the lookout.

-STP

swordstoplow@gmail.com

Bonus Decklist – My Zombiplasm Decklist

http://deck.tk/71X85CIf