Combo zombies by SaffronOlive (Modern)

Budget Magic: $106 Combo Zombies (Modern)
by SaffronOlive // Jan 9, 2023

The Deck
Combo Zombies is a Zombie tribal deck that can win like a normal creature-aggro deck by beating down in combat but also can go infinite in a bunch of different ways thanks to Thran Vigil!

The Combo
Let's start with the most interesting aspect of our deck: the infinite combo! Here's the plan: First, we need Thran Vigil so we can put a +1/+1 counter on a creature whenever one of our creatures leaves the graveyard. While we have a couple of Thran Vigil synergies (like casting Gravecrawler from the graveyard a bunch of times to grow our creatures), the big payoff for the enchantment is Putrid Goblin, which has persist. With Thran Vigil on the battlefield, if Putrid Goblin dies, it will briefly go to the graveyard before returning to play with a –1/–1 counter thanks to persist. Putrid Goblin leaving the graveyard will trigger Thran Vigil to put a +1/+1 counter on a creature, which we'll use on Putrid Goblin to get rid of the –1/–1 counter, returning it to its normal form, which means the same thing will happen the next time it dies. Basically, having Thran Vigil and Putrid Goblin means we can sacrifice Putrid Goblin an infinite number of times to something like Carrion Feeder (which will make an infinitely large Carrion Feeder) or Nantuko Husk (which will also get infinitely large but just for one turn). While growing a massive Carrion Feeder or Nantuko Husk is pretty sweet, things become even more exciting with one additional combo piece...

If we add Undead Augur to the combo, we get to draw a bunch of cards as Putrid Goblin dies. Sadly, this isn't infinite because we lose a life for each card we draw, but we can usually draw 10 or 15 cards to find another finisher before sacrificing Undead Augur before it kills us. If we add Headless Rider to the combo, then we make infinite 2/2 Zombie tokens since every time Putrid Goblin dies, Headless Rider will trigger to make a 2/2, and these Zombie tokens should win us the game the next turn unless our opponent has a wrath. For a more immediate win, we can add Plague Belcher to the mix to drain our opponent every time a Zombie—like Putrid Goblin—dies.

While not full-on combo pieces, both Champion of the Perished and Gravecrawler are pretty synergistic with the combo. If we have Champion of the Perished on the battlefield while we are comboing, it will grow infinitely large thanks to Putrid Goblin entering the battlefield over and over again. Meanwhile, Gravecrawler can replace Putrid Goblin as a sort of mini-combo with Thran Vigil and Carrion Feeder. While we can go fully infinite, since we need to spend a mana each time we cast Gravecrawler from our graveyard, we can sacrifice Gravecrawler to Carrion Feeder to grow it, recast Gravecrawler from our graveyard to trigger Thran Vigil, grow something with its +1/+1 counter, and do this as many times as our mana permits.

And this covers all of the Zombies in our deck. One of the things that make the deck so powerful is that pretty much every creature in the deck is a combo piece in one way or another. But outside of maybe Putrid Goblin itself, which isn't great outside of the combo, all of our creatures are also just good Zombies that form the foundation of our Zombie-beatdown plan. Basically, the power of Combo Zombies is that we are a solid budget Zombie deck that also has the ability to go infinite, which allows us to play and win a fair game but also win out of nowhere with the combo.

Other Stuff
Rounding out our main deck are Fatal Push for removal and Diabolic Intent to tutor up whatever combo piece we happen to be missing. Diabolic Intent specifically is great in our deck because we have a ton of sac fodder (like Gravecrawler and Putrid Goblin). This often turns it into a Modern-legal Demonic Tutor, which is pretty absurd!

Playing the Deck
Two important notes on playing Combo Zombies. First, Thran Vigil only works during our turn. I actually messed this up myself in one of our early games, by chump-blocking with a Putrid Goblin during our opponent's turn only to realize that Thran Vigil wouldn't trigger. This isn't a big deal, but it is worth remembering. We have to combo during our turn, not our opponent's turn.

The other thing to realize is that the full combo doesn't happen all that often. If you go back through our league, we went fully infinite twice, meaning we won with the full infinite combo just 20% of the time. As such, you should think of the deck as a synergistic Zombie tribal beatdown deck that can also combo, rather than as an infinite combo deck that can sometimes beat down, because the synergistic beatdown wins happen way, way more often than the full infinite combo wins do. If you focus too much on the combo and too little on beating down, you'll probably have a rough time with the deck.

Wrap-Up
Record-wise, Combo Zombies was as good as it gets, going 5-0 in a Modern league on Magic Online while taking down several of the top decks in the format, including Izzet Murktide, Rakdos Scam, and Domain Zoo, which sets Combo Zombies apart as one of the few Modern decks to have 5-0'ed a league on Budget Magic. While consistently 5-0'ing might be a challenge, this is a pretty good sign that Combo Zombies is a really solid budget option for the format, which is especially important now considering how expensive it is to get into Modern.

As far as changes to make to the budget build of the deck, I'm not sure Nantuko Husk is worthwhile. We ended up sideboarding it out pretty often. It might be worth replacing some with something like Cryptbreaker or another copy of Headless Rider, which was really impressive both inside and outside of the combo.

So, should you play Combo Zombies in Modern? I think the answer is pretty clearly yes. As we talked about before, it's pretty rare for Budget Magic decks to 5-0 a Modern league, and Combo Zombies managed to achieve that feat. If you like tribal aggro decks with some sneaky synergy and / or weird combos, this deck seems like a great budget option for Modern!