Zombie Blue Back thoughts..... consistency?

[woody_aaron]

Hi Guys,

playing this this weekend. Am wondering what you thin about the consistency of the deck. Have a lot of cheap spells in blue and mid cost zombies to hit early/mid game.

http://deckstats.net/decks/67085/521321-zombie-blues

Any brief feedback really welcome.

Cheers Black/Blue Squadron

A

[KouriNick]

Hi woody_aaron! Blue Black Zombies is a really popular combination right now, and it looks like your deck has some really good zombies and zombie synergy in it. With just a few small changes we can make the deck both more consistent and more competitive.

To make this more consistent, we need to take a lot of the cards that we just have 1 of, and figure out how to get 3 or 4 copies of the best ones.  This will increase our chances of drawing our best zombies. The cards that stand out that we should try to gt more of are Negate (very powerful counterspell that stops our opponent from using removal on our zombies, casting a board wipe, or laying down a powerful enchantment), Compelling Deterrence (nice bounce spell that can let our zombies get through our opponents defenses, and forces our opponent to discard something if we have a zombie, which we usually will), Pilfered plans (populates our graveyard and lets us draw extra zombies), Gurmag angler (with all the ways to put stuff in our graveyard, this should be easy to cast for 1 or 2 mana. 2 copies would be plenty), Lamplighter of Selhoff (can be a nice finisher, plus lets us filter through our deck and add stuff to the graveyard for Gurmag Angler), Drunau Corpse Trawler (Can make our zombies deadly, and lets us go wide), Containment Membrane (anything that stops our opponents creatures is worth having in multiples), and Relentless Dead (one of the best zombies available right now. A little pricey though, so if you can't get more no problem, we'll work with one). If we got one more Negate, Pilfered Plans, Lamplighter, Drunau Corpse Trawler and Gurmag Angler we'd be in nice shape. If we could get at least 2 more Compelling Deterrence and Containment Membrane, that would also help with consistency a lot!

Now that we're adding as many as 10 new cards, we need to make some cuts. The other one-of cards would be the easiest place to start. Returned Reveler (not bad, but not great either), Startled Awake (nice for a mill deck, but doesn't really fit our theme), Earwig Squad (without other rogues, we'll never get the prowl, so he won't be able to be used to his full potential), Returned Centaur (another just okay card that we don't need if we're only running as a 1-of), Creeping Dread (unless we get a Madness sub-theme going, I think this will hurt us as much as our opponent), Annul (great sideboard card, but dead often enough to not run in the main deck), Grim Guardian (with only 2 enchantments, his ability won't go off very often),  Corpsesweft (these are pretty cool... and frankly, if we cut the one Gurmag Angler, we could keep these in. Otherwise, they step over each other and we won't be able to get the max effect out of either card), and Just the wind (good card, but for us, Compelling Deterrence is just better).  That makes a total of 11 cuts. From there the deck should now look something like this:

//Land
11 Island
11 Swamp
1 Blighted Cataract
23 total

//Creatures
3 Rottenheart Ghoul
2 Stitched Mangler
2 Lamplighter of Selhoff
2 Drunau Corpse Trawler
3 Rancid Rats
2 Gurmag Angler
2 Thraben Gargoyle
1 Relentless Dead
17 total

//Spells
3 Shamble Back
2 Macabre Waltz
2 Grotesque Mutation
2 Alms of the Vein
2 Negate
2 Pilfered Plans
3 Containment Membrane
4 Compelling Deterrence
20 total

Looking at this, it looks like our creature count is now a little low. We can fix that by trading in some spells for more creatures. Alms in the Vein really wants to be in a Madness / Discard heavy deck, so we should be okay letting it go for another pair of Stitched Mangler. Shamble Back is good, but 3 feels like too many (especially since we don't want to be removing our own creatures and taking Gurmag food), so if we swap 1 for a 4th Rancid Rats, our creature count should be much better.

Finally, Rottenheart Ghoul is just so much mana for 2 attack, and we're pretty light on low mana cost zombies, so replacing the three with something like Crow of Dark Tidings (which will give us some flying protection and feed our graveyard), Diregraf Colossus (since we're all zombie, this guy can get very powerful!), or Prized Amalgam (will trigger off your relentless dead, plus 3/3 is really nice) would give us more power to work with.

This is just one way to go though, but by doing something like this, I think you'll find the deck working significant;y more consistently. I hope you found this helpful! good luck and Happy Hunting

[woody_aaron]

An update on a few hands of this from last night...

Deffo feeling a bit creature light from the get go playing my opponents Surge strat deck, so have your suggestions on over from manaleak.com (awesome local store!). Was struggling to get any creatures on turn 3/4 out to affectively counter surging so looking forward to getting Crow of Dark Tidings into the field.

Also due to my poor shuffling the first game was a complete white wash, but I did fond that all the single spells didn't achieve the consistency I wanted. Hopefully can revise closer to your suggestion for the next bout, can add a second Gurmang Angler that wasn't really working in this control deck

( http://deckstats.net/decks/67085/508055-sorin-grim-nemesis-control-dec )

Would love to get some madness into a deck strategy (not this one) as I had a good roll with Creeping Dread and Alms of the Vein, but I can see this doesn't sit right here. Could you enlighten me to the workings of a mill deck?

Cheers!

A

[woody_aaron]

Additions made thanks to KouriNick! Can't wait to play this!

[KouriNick]

Additions made thanks to KouriNick! Can't wait to play this!

Happy to help