Topic: [Standard] World War Z (Deck). Input Needed Please.

Returning after 14 years away from this game has really been bittersweet. The game has changed alot since odyssey block, some for the good and some for the bad.

I've made a fun little deck to play with, and in all honesty I'm kinda struggling and need to reach out for some pro advice. I'm basically looking to swoop into FNM and take it by storm, and from my deck testing here are my observations.

1. The deck has the tendency to either give you a strong win, followed by 2 losses by either being manascrewed or by having an over abundance of land.
2. Zombie Apocalypse isn't seeing play as much as I would have thought. I'm finding myself holding it as last card in hand more times than playing it.
3. I'm getting beat over the head by the red card that does damage and exiles the card instead of putting it to graveyard, therefore loosing my undying cards to exile.
4. i've learned that #3 and Planeswalkers are this deck's kryptonite so to speak as i have nothing other than corrupt to deal with the walkers, Normally tutored for.

Please keep in mind that #1 could be simply due to the digital engines I'm being forced to use (LackeyCCG and Magic Workstation) due to having to play magic on a budget.
Any and all Pro Modifications will be appreciated. Please explain why you would add/remove cards as I'm a returning player from back in the day and I'm still learning the what and why's of current standard format.

Here is the link to it: http://deckbox.org/sets/447997

Re: [Standard] World War Z (Deck). Input Needed Please.

The thing with zombies is to be really good you need a sac outlet.  Take  look at this RB variant.

http://deckstats.net/decks/2995/10047-b … zombies/en

4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Rakdos Guildgate
8 Swamp
2 Mountain
4 Gravecrawler
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Geralf's Messenger
4 Blood Artist
3 Hellrider
3 Falkenrath Aristocrat
2 Thundermaw Hellkite
4 Searing Spear
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Tragic Slip
2 Dreadbore

This is a good starting place I think.  there was a card released in m14 that I think might help this deck suprise a lot of people, that's burning earth.  You can drop all the guild gates and make some modifications.  Look at the revised list below.  (just pulling this off the top of my head)

3 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
10 Swamp
5 Mountain
4 Gravecrawler
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Geralf's Messenger
4 Blood Artist
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
2 Thundermaw Hellkite
3 Burning Earth
4 Searing Spear
4 Pillar of Flame
2 Tragic Slip
1 Doom Blade
2 Dreadbore

You gain so much by adding another color.  That mono just isn't the way to go, and in this deck you can cast burning earth and not be penalized too much.  The sac outlet of blood artist and falkenwrath provide a wonderful synergy and burning earth is deadly against a lot of decks right now.

If you're not married to the zombies there are lots of other types of decks to try.  Look at the standard decklists on SCG.  You will see  large variety of options.
http://www.starcitygames.com/pages/decklists/

I'm not saying your mono deck can't do well, at an FNM, you have good "stuff" in the deck, but to sweep in and take people by surprise is another mater all together.

Last edited by elpablo (2013-08-08 13:29:42)

Re: [Standard] World War Z (Deck). Input Needed Please.

To me it seems like there are a few problems with the deck as it stands now.  First, you're running too much one-for-one removal.  You have a lot of reactive removal that will help take out an opponent's threat, but you're mostly going to be simply trading your removal card for one of their creature cards.  You're simply dragging the game out, and your deck isn't really built to take advantage of a really long game.  You'd probably be better off running more copies of Mutilate and Shrivel.

You're running way too few creatures for a deck that wants to win with creatures.  You effectively only have 10 creatures that can attack, plus whatever Endless Ranks of the Dead can make, assuming that it sticks around.  You need more creatures.  If you're running more Mutilates, I'm not convinced that you need Corpse Blockade any longer, as you should be putting your own creatures in the graveyard with the -X/-X effect.

I'd probably also cut the Diabolic Tutors.  There doesn't seem to be much that is unique that you are going to tutor for.  I don't know exactly what is in Standard now, but some more business spells or creatures are likely going to be much better than the tutors.

If I were changing the deck I'd end up with:

4 Gravecrawler
4 Butcher Ghoul
4 Geralf's Messenger
1 Liliana's Reaver
2 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
7 more creatures

4 Murder
4 Mutilate
2 Shrivel
3 Corrupt
2 Endless Ranks of the Dead

23 Swamp

Shadowborn Demon looks pretty fun for this type of deck as well.  Squeezing in one or two might be an interesting experiment.

Re: [Standard] World War Z (Deck). Input Needed Please.

Thank you psrex, that's more along the lines of the information i was looking for.
elpablo, i appreciate the input and the information but it came across more like "Abandon that deck and use this one" more than assistance to correct what i've already got to work with.

i can see where you're going with the 1:1 removal, and that's why i'm asking for help. Back when i played there were many other options for removal i.e chainers edict, engineered plague, smother, innocent blood, infest, mutilate, and even visara. I looked over everything that was available in standard with my decked app sorted by all standard cards and with text "Destroy" or "Sacrifice" and there wasn't much to choose from.

I can see where you would make the modifications, and the whole reasoning for the corpse blockades being in the deck are to boost my creatures with mikaeus on the field. That way i can either sac my geralf's for direct damage, and with mikaeus on the field i can boost all my solid creatures for +1/+1.

You would also be surprised how often endless ranks stays on the board, not too many people get worried about it when there's nothing on the board and i've got solid control of the game with those 1:1 removal, Only to pull a zombie apocalypse and start making exponential tokens. Now an idea for modification i had was minus the 2 zombie apocalypses and replace them with rise of the dark realms that way when i make the move for re-animation i can pull everything i've been controlling out of their graveyard and whatever is in mine as well.

Granted different areas have different play styles and deck compositions. I can see where an extra crawlers and butchers are benificial, i've also been told by several people i should cut the butchers altogether for 2 more geralf's and a couple crypt ghasts.

sadly all the other modifications were originally in the deck however the deck was closing in on 70 cards, and got tossed asside to speed up the deck play. i'd be interested in hearing what you'd cut for the modifications you're proposing. Looking at it briefly i can see i would be adding 10 cards, with only the 4 tutors being removed for modifications.

Re: [Standard] World War Z (Deck). Input Needed Please.

Sorry if it came off that way, but there have been decks in the past that are using the core mechanic you're trying to build on and did it successfully.  There's no reason not to analyze their contribution to the type of deck you're trying to build, rather than reinvent the wheel all by yourself.  You can simply modify and clean it up based on what's available in the current standard card pool. The sac outlet is important to get the most out of the zombies.  Also, white is another color to splash.  Playing mono precludes a lot of good cards that are available to you for no reason other than sticking to a theme.

Corpse blockade is a pretty terrible sac outlet to get value from the zombies.  Cartel aristocrats combine with blood artist can get damage across and provide blocking much better than the blockade.  The protection the aristocrats gets is also valuable when resisting removal.  You could also run a black green version of the deck listed using varolz and get value from the yard and his regeneration ability.

Adding another color gives you access to much better cards than black alone can provide. Your build really needs a red, white, green splash to be competitively viable. 

The suggestions that psrex added turns the deck towards the "rock".  It's a generally black core with a splash of green for life gain.  It focuses on controlling the board and gaining incremental card advantage.  It's also been doing really well. However, the cards are different than what you're currently representing with your zombie deck. 

http://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/comments … _standard/
http://roxiecards.com/rocking-the-scg-invitational/

If you stick with the zombies it's important to realize you're playing an aggro deck and something like blood artist can help close the game and put your opponent out of reach of your life total all at the same time.

Last edited by elpablo (2013-08-08 21:15:24)

Re: [Standard] World War Z (Deck). Input Needed Please.

also, can't stress this enough. Tutoring is bad.  Sure it allows you to get a card, but you're paying 4 extra to basically draw a card.  There are more efficient ways to get card advantage.

Re: [Standard] World War Z (Deck). Input Needed Please.

I appreciate the replies elpablo, I'm reading what you're saying and hearing what you have to say about the blood artist and aristocrat. I've also read both articles you cited prior to you posting them while i was doing my learning on current standard deck trends. You're 100% right in that those decks perform competitively, and you're 100% right on the sac outlet and damage potential that artist and aristocrat provide. I don't particularly like netdecking, I find that it's bullshit to sweep a FNM due to deckbuild that's more or less a copy of a current top performer. With that being said, us older players tend to be set in our ways, i'm sure you may have come across a couple of us at some point or another. Now with that being said it would be naive of me to ignore that netdecking is a strong way to play so i've scooped up decklists of some of the top performing decks out there, i believe one was the top performer for the theros qualification matches, and one was a monthly top performer for the month of july. Coincidentally the decklist that i grabbed was for a Black/White Zombie deck that had the specific strategy that you're referring to while still having the theme more or less of zombies. This is what it looks like http://deckbox.org/sets/448542 there were sideboard cards but this list is just to show you that i'm familiar with what you're talking about.

I keep hearing tutors are out, tutors are out..... yet nobody can give me a viable alternative to find the card i need when i need to have it in my hand. So far the solutions i've had are ones that just make me draw cards, which is good. That concept works and i agree with it, however short of me revamping my entire deck to bring it more inline to match other decks that are playing the cards with drawing capabilities, i speculate that they won't work in this deck. But like I said, I have yet to have someone say "Remove the tutor's for *Insert Cardname*, and this is why."

My overall goal is to make something new, that nobody's expecting. I haven't even tapped into the library of artifacts that are out there, i don't even know if there's anything that would benifit this deck other than pithing needles to smack down the retarded planeswalkers.

If you could look at the decklist for my zombie deck and give input on what could potentially work in addition to the removal of the corpse blockades for the artist/aristocrat combo it would be appreciated.

What are your thoughts on Crypt Ghast and Army Of The Damned? Anyone think they may have a place in here?

Re: [Standard] World War Z (Deck). Input Needed Please.

Well, to put things in perspective I am one of the older players.  I remember when Armageddon and Serra angel where the wombo combo.  People could play mox's and duel lands were in every deck.  It was the best of times, It was the worst of times tongue

I find that it's bullshit to sweep a FNM due to deckbuild that's more or less a copy of a current top performer.

This rarely happens due to net decking.  You still have to be a competent player.  My store is very competitive, 30+ people, tier 1 decks, rogue tier 2 decks. It runs the gambit, I don't know how your store is, but if it's even half as competitive as mine then "sweeping" an FNM with a tournament deck isn't very likely at all. In fact playing JUND I've never made 1st place, 2nd once, 3-4 a few, 6-8 a few more times and when we go six rounds for a top 12 pay out , I've done that a couple times.

My overall goal is to make something new, that nobody's expecting. I haven't even tapped into the library of artifacts that are out there, i don't even know if there's anything that would benifit this deck other than pithing needles to smack down the retarded planeswalkers.

I can respect wanting to brew your own build, it's fun and it's part of the game, but as a married father of 4, I don't have time to do the testing that's necessary to brew my own build.  You literally need dozens of test matches or more to make sure your card choices are valid against the other tier 1 decks out there.  If you can't beat american and Jund right now then your deck probably won't fair very well.  Netdecking is a good way to find decks and save yourself some time.  Ultimately once you start evaluating why they make the choices in the decks and how everything plays in the meta, the deck starts to be come inevitable, as if there isn't another way for the deck to play and evolve.  I say let the deck doctors do their work, and as long as we understand the methods behind their madness then we shouldn't feel bad about emulating their wisdom.  That's not to say you can' slap something together for fun, but we shouldn't expect to do better than the pros at constructing competitive decks.

I would say, if you want to brew, do it on the side while you play a more competitive deck until your sure your brew is worthy.  A friend and I try this every now and then.  You really need someone to help you test and work out the kinks before you take it to a tournament.

Tutoring - Okay, here's how it goes.  Statistically, tutoring is very effective you're 100% like to get the card you tutor for at a substantial cost of 4 mana.  This severely hurts your tempo, at a 4 mana sorcery, you have to play it on your turn and the advantage for finding the card quickly becomes nullified by your tempo loss.   This huge investment is such a draw back that it's not worth it.  Let me try to explain.

Lets say you curve out in your original build.

Starting hand, crawler, ghoul, reaver, tutor, 3 lands, you draw into the lands and the blockade the rest of the turns.

Turn 1: Grave Crawler
Turn 2: butcher ghoul
Turn 3: Corpse blockade
Turn 4: Tutor - for mikaus
Turn 5: Liliana's Reaver
Turn 6: Mikaeus

That's great, you curved out, but remember zombies are low costed and aggressively positioned for a reason.  Assuming you got to attack and do damage you're looking at, maybe 20 damage on turn 6 if you're opponent just plays land every turn and does nothing. In this meta that's way too slow for just combat damage, you need something to help go over the top, and you can't realistically expect to get to do that much combat damage with out resistance. On your turn 4 you sunk 4 mana into tutoring basically making mikaeus cost 10 instead of 6.  A real opponent is going to be playing threats of their own, or removing your threats, and sinking 10 mana into a card that is not going to win the game is bad math. As an aggro deck you need to be able to effectively deal with their threats, circumvent them or, remove them.  The bonus to zombies is they're decently resilient to removal.  Tutoring does none of this for you, and it's inconsistent, you're not always going to draw the spell, and if you do always get it then it's a dead card for minimum 4 turns at which you do nothing for a turn while you search your library. On turn 4, jund can be playing a thragtusk , on turn 4 American can be slamming verdict, both of these plays impact the board in a huge way while tutoring does nothing to the board and provides incremental card advantage at a huge cost (sorcery speed too).  Putting consistent and efficient draw card utility in is the best thing for a long game (the long game is not where you want to be, zombies are short game, aggro decks).  Underworld connections, sign in blood, the grandaddy of drawing himself Griselbrand (expensive but effective), these are the cards you need to be looking at to increase your card advantage and be consistent if you really feel like you need it.  Really and truly decks like the one you're attempting to build can get away with a couple sign in blood, but really need to muligan aggressively to get the starting hands you desire. I'd wager you haven't done enough testing with tutor to truly understand how much it can hurt your decks tempo.

1. The deck has the tendency to either give you a strong win, followed by 2 losses by either being manascrewed or by having an over abundance of land.
2. Zombie Apocalypse isn't seeing play as much as I would have thought. I'm finding myself holding it as last card in hand more times than playing it.
3. I'm getting beat over the head by the red card that does damage and exiles the card instead of putting it to graveyard, therefore loosing my undying cards to exile.
4. i've learned that #3 and Planeswalkers are this deck's kryptonite so to speak as i have nothing other than corrupt to deal with the walkers, Normally tutored for.

You pointed these issues out yourself in your first post, and a lot of these can be solved by simply splashing another color, but I'll try to steer away from that in this post.

1 and 2. You're still building an aggro deck  (zombies are aggro you just have to deal with that)  and you shouldn't be topping out at more than 4 (maybe 5) cmc to be consistent.  Card's like zombie apoc and mikaeus are to expensive and slow to do what you need to do.  Cut the lands to 21-22 and cut these expensive cards.  A couple mutavaults might be good here.

3. Nothing to do about Pillar, it just eats zombies.  Terminus is bad for you too. If you see decks running these you can expect them to side in more graveyard hate, rest in peace kills you too.  Also, scavenging ooze is big and can still eat your undying guys before they return from the yard.  IE: geralf dies, undying trigger goes on the stack, activate scavenging ooze targeting your undying guy in the yard, scavenging goes off first, undying fizzles.  Graveyard decks have really had their time and you might "surprise" some people by running one but don't expect to win 1st place.

4. black has no direct removal for walkers.  the best you can do is something that does direct damage to the player and redirect it to the walker.  Lifebane might help and other evasive creatures, but they are pretty much guaranteed an activation of their walker.  You can try to sideboard some discard cards like appetite for brains or duress. Pithing needle helps against them too.

You need more variety in your creature base.  Blood throne vampire comboes well with the zombies, blood artist, and I would also suggest a set of lifebane zombies. They will be good against decks like naya and jund.  Vampire nighthawks's wouldn't be bad either for now. Butcher ghoul is really aweful, it's a 2 mana 1/1, get rid of this guy.  Get the blood artist and the sac vampire.  You need lifegain,  gift of the orzhov could be money in this deck. Really without adding another color your options become limited.  If you do want to go big black, griselbrand is the father of lifegain and drawing. If you do this you could try the enchant combo (janky, but dangerous).  Speaking of drawing, and card advantage, some sign in blood main deck is what you need, cut the totors, you lose so much tempo and in an aggro deck you might as well be handing them the game if you spend a turn doing nothing.  A 2 mana investment for 2 cards out of your deck is pretty decent. If you think you might be in a long game, you can side something like underworld connections.   You need ways to pump your creatures, Liliana of the dark realms can help you here.  She thins your deck and can provide serious pumpage to your dudes.  The gift of orzhov is great to since it gives evasion.

Either way good luck.