Innistrad: Midnight Hunt has landed, and it’s time to talk about the most brain-eating tribe in Magic: Zombies! Specifically, I wanted to take a deep dive into whether Zombies could be viable as a tribe in Pioneer, where it can draw upon a variety of zombies-matter sets.
Zombies in Pioneer have always had some issues. It seemed like they should have enough zombie cards, but I always felt that the tribe’s issue was that their cards were disjointed. For example, they have a variety of powerful one-drops but none that fit into the same strategy:
Cryptbreaker is an incredible payoff for a tribal strategy, but it also feels really out of place in a pure aggro deck since it holds your zombies back from attacking. Meanwhile Stitcher’s Supplier supports graveyard strategies but isn’t much of an attacker as a 1/1. This becomes an issue when you wouldn’t want to run those cards in the same list as cards like Dread Wanderer and Diregraf Ghoul.
Two drops were an even bigger issue for the deck, as there were very few strong options. Relentless Dead is similar to Cryptbreaker; it is powerful in grindy matchups but as a 2/2 is a very slow clock and not a great blocker against aggro decks. It’s also not really a curve filler when you would prefer to cast it with mana open. Wight and Graveyard Marshal were other reasonable choices, but never quite strong enough for the cut (also, both had two toughness) and Mire Triton is again more of a graveyard synergy card.
At three mana and above, there are actually a huge number of zombie lords and other payoffs, but you can only fit a few 3+ mana cards in an aggressive deck so it was simply never viable to start your curve that late.
So, it may sound like all I’ve done so far is criticize zombies, but it feels like there has been a storm brewing, just beneath the surface. Maybe a Rooftop Storm? Midnight Hunt is here and with it are some new tools — possibly enough to launch Zombies into the mainstream!
New Cards – Midnight Hunt
Champion of the Perished does everything that Zombies wanted, for pretty much every kind of zombie deck you can imagine. It’s by far your most aggressive option when on the beatdown, it’s a growing threat that can quickly get out of range of red removal/enemy creatures, it rewards going wide, and it even has some combo synergy (more on that later). The card really does it all.
The other Midnight Hunt card which I can’t go without mentioning is Tainted Adversary. His above-average stats make him a great turn two play, and a deathtoucher always has good attacks. He is also our first playable two-drop that doesn’t die to Play with Fire or Magma Spray, which is really important. But of course, the best thing about Adversary is that he scales into the late game, with the five-mana mode being the preferred way to cast him. Additional zombie bodies play very well with lords, Cryptbreaker, Dark Salvation, and more. It’s also quite notable that with just a 1/1 Champion of the Perished in play, casting Tainted Adversary with one “kick” gives you two threats which are out of range of Radiant Flames/Anger of the Gods.
Decklists
Mono Black
Zombies are black, so mono-black is where we start. This list takes inspiration from (and should compare most directly to) the vampire tribal list in Pioneer. Champion of the Perished plays a similar role as Knight of the Ebon Legion, cards like Cryptbreaker create value, and we have a powerful planeswalker for removal, card advantage, or incremental value. Like Vampires, this deck also gets to play a large number of manlands to give the deck longevity.
Where Zombies starts to differ from Vampires is in the number of lords. Vampires is able to grind slightly more value, but Zombies goes significantly bigger by playing multiple 3-mana lords that grant extra abilities such as deathtouch and menace.
Black-Blue
Let’s move on to something a little bluer and bolder. The biggest issue with the mono-black zombies deck was that there were no companions that worked! Midnight Hunt brought us some other neat toys… Bladestitched Skaab is a two-mana lord for Zombies, and if we bring down our curve to two it opens up the possibility of running Lurrus of the Dream Den!
Cards like Tainted Adversary shine alongside Lurrus since you can use its kicker effect even when it’s cast from the graveyard. The lower curve and the blue splash also allow for some more disruptive elements, with Thoughtseize and counterspells helping to shore up matchups that would normally prey on black aggro.
Black-Green Combo Zombies
I did mention that zombies fit into a variety of different archetypes, but something that hasn’t been fully explored is zombies as a combo deck. The pure combo deck that can be made uses the following:
Sacrificing Shambling Ghast creates a treasure, Liliana’s -3 allows you to endlessly recast it from the grave. Each time you go through this loop your Nantuko Husk gets bigger, allowing for a one-hit kill, or you can combo along with Diregraf Colossus for infinite tokens, with Plague Belcher for unlimited damage, or with Champion of the Perished for another infinitely large creature!
Since there are a lot of different pieces that need to get into play at once and we want the combo to come out of nowhere, it makes the most sense to me to go another direction with this deck: Green for Collected Company.
The strength in this list as a combo deck is that the pieces are worth playing individually. It has a grindy card advantage engine, an aggressive curve of creatures, and still has an “I win” button which forces opponents to play around it. Green also gives the deck some strong answers to hate pieces in the sideboard.
Black-Red
Black… Blue… Green… what’s next? Red! This next deck starts with a simple question: did you realize that Dreadhorde Arcanist is a zombie?
This deck works for a number of reasons. Champion of the Perished truly shines as a secondary threat, since the deck otherwise lacks in aggression when it doesn’t have Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger to close out games. The fact that we have replaced Young Pyromancer also means that the deck has less dependency on spells, so it is able to pack in a few more creatures. The adversaries synergize with just about everything: they’re an amazing hit for Claim/Fame, they come back with Lurrus of the Dream Den, they make tokens to sac to Village Rites, and they of course pump up the Champions. Shambling Ghast is another zombie we get to run as sacrifice fodder alongside Stitcher’s Supplier.
One of the biggest biggest reasons to add Zombie synergies to this deck, though, is Dark Salvation. This card was already strong in some of the previous lists, but in addition to this list having more uses for the tokens, the deck also takes advantage of the fact that Dark Salvation is only one mana value while in the graveyard, meaning that Dreadhorde Arcanist can flash it back. It is cast with X equal to zero, but it still acts as a removal spell that scales up with the board.
Black-White
So we’ve got aggression, two-mana lords, combos, and sacrifice strategies… What if we mix them all together? Let’s look at Black-White:
Return to the Ranks allows this deck to rebuy its powerful threats while Rally the Ancestors often wins the game on the spot when Corpse Knight or Wayward Servant are involved. This deck’s strategy can be fairly linear: Go wide with zombies and kill the opponent. However, with so many recursive, defensive options it can feel like the only way this deck loses is against graveyard hate.
This deck tries to address the opponent’s graveyard hate with its sideboard. There are ways to answer cards like Rest in Peace by destroying it or by pulling it from the opponent’s hand. We also include some ways to win without relying on the graveyard such as Cryptbreaker, which didn’t make the main deck. That said, there are some decks in the meta that do not have significant graveyard hate – even post-board – such as Phoenix and Jund Sacrifice, and this deck can be almost unbeatable in those matchups.
Wrapping Up
This wasn’t every flavor of Zombies which may be playable in Pioneer, but I am hoping that it covered many of the best ways that the new zombies from Midnight Hunt fit into the Pioneer meta.
Mono-black Zombies feels like a viable alternative to running Vampires, especially if you are in a meta where you need to break through in creature combat. Blue-Black Zombies is a disruptive option with a low curve, but probably isn’t the one I will be playing. Green-Black Zombies introduces a combo plan that many may be unprepared for, although it runs into the issue of most Company decks (namely Shadows’ Verdict). Red-Black Zombies may actually be an upgrade on the existing Dreadhorde Arcanist lists by presenting an additional threat… and finally White-Black zombies may be a fantastic meta call since it requires opponents to have proper graveyard hate to beat it!
That wraps up my initial testing and decklists for Zombies in Pioneer. I’ll be looking forward to seeing if we get any more options for these decks when Crimson Vow comes out, and until then I may be moving on to another Innistrad tribe!
