GB Zombies - SaffronOlive (Non-Budget) (Modern)

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/budget-magic-98-39-tix-modern-gb-zombies

The link is to the budget deck. This one is on the bottom of the page.

The non-budget build of GB Zombies gets access to a secret card that can make any tribe playable (or even good) in Modern: Collected Company. Beyond this, there are quite a few upgrades, with more lords, some copies of Relentless Dead, and better removal and mana, not to mention Liliana of the Veil. All things told, this deck is slightly less aggressive than the one in the videos. Instead of playing two-power one-drops and four-power two-drops, we are looking to outvalue our opponent in the midgame by hitting powerful creatures at instant speed with the help of Collected Company. We also have the ability to play more three-drops thanks to the addition of Birds of Paradise, which allows us to start dropping things like Geralf's Messenger and Death Baron as soon as Turn 2. While I think this build is a pretty major upgrade, I'm also not sure it's worth running out and spending nearly $1,000 to build Zombies in Modern. Although the tribe is fun and relatively competitive, it seems unlikely to be tier one in the near future, even with the upgrades.

Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. We went 3-2 in our matches on video and 4-4 overall (not featured: a second loss to UW Spirits—which feels like a hard matchup, since our creatures are rougly the same power, but theirs fly while ours are ground-bound—and two games against budget 8 Rack, one where we drew Gravecrawlers and won fairly easily, the other where our opponent drew a ton of Smallpoxes and crushed us). The deck was a lot of fun to play, and while it is mostly an aggressive deck, it has enough synergy built in that it didn't feel particularly mindless like some other aggressive decks. The other big benefit of Zombies is that there are a ton of different ways to upgrade. Apart from building a full-on value deck like our Collected Company list, there's probably a sweet Relentless Dead list out there that can grind out value with sacrifice outlets, an Aether Vial list that looks to cheat a ton of lords into play on the cheap, and probably a discard-heavy build that could almost play a little bit like 8 Rack. So, if you do buy the deck, there are a ton of small changes that can be made to keep it feeling fresh and new for a long, long time!

Don't forget: next week, we get to start exploring Kaladesh Standard! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at [email protected].