Oh Captain, My Captain

Who Died and Made You F##king King of the Zombies!!!

What up world! This is your boy Captain Red Zone coming at you with my first deck for 3TF. This week I’m going to bring to you my first themed Commander deck.  If you know anything about me, you know that I have a strange love/hate/fearful relationship with the undead hordes that walk the earth. Most zombies movies never really tell you how the dead gained the ablitiy to rise and walk once more, but in the game of Magic we have Necromancers. People who spend years of their life learning how to bring be corpses of their loved one, enemies, and sometime just random dead people back “to life”. There are a lot of different Legends out there to choose from, but today I’m going to talk about Balthor the Defiled.

Balthor is a 2/2 Zombie Dwarf for 2BB. His abilities are “All Minions get +1/+1.” and “BBB, Remove Balthor the Defiled: Each player returns all black and red creatures cards from his or her graveyard to play.“….. HEY WHERE YOU GOING!!! I know he may not be the best zombie legend in the game, but if you’re looking for a Legend who is on theme for a zombie deck he’s your guy! I mean come on!! He’s a guy that dies and brings all the black creatures from your grave to the battlefield. So let’s get started.

They Just Won’t Die!!!

First we’ll start with our lords. They’re the ones who will help us keep our legion alive(?) and strong.

Lord of the Undead, Undead Warchief, Death Baron, Cemetery Reaper:  All of these guys bring with them an attack and defense bonus. But they also each bring with them their own little added bonuses. Undead Warchief helps us cast our guys by bringing their cost down by 1, Death Baron gives our guys Deathtouch, Lord of the Undead helps bring back dead dudes, and Cemetery Reaper gives us a 2/2 zombie token while removing a creature from an enemy/our grave.

Boneknitter, Zombie Master, Zombie Trailblazer:  Like they say, sometimes “Size doesn’t matter”. Big numbers won’t save you from a Day of Judgment. Sometimes you need to be able to get there. Zombie Master  and Boneknitter gives us the chance to save some or all of our dudes with Regenerate and the master does it for a single B for each dude. This won’t stop the Wrath of God’s out there but hey no one’s perfect. He also gives us Swampwalk which isn’t too bad when you got Zombie Trailblazer who can turn any enemy land into a Swamp for our horde to get to the tasty brains waiting on the other side of the table.

Gravespawn Sovereign: This guy will keep the dead coming if you can keep four other zombies around him. He’ll even save your non-zombie guys from time to time.

But lords can’t keep our guys going all by themselves. We need to be good Necromancers and keep the death flowing.

Haunted Crossroads: The World if full of Haters and Haters going to Hate. There is going to be one guy that likes the idea of removing graveyards for fun and profit in your play group. Haunted Crossroads gives us a chance to save a few of our dudes from an eternal life in exile.

Ghastly Remains, Phyrexian Delver, Woebearer, Gravedigger, Bone Dancer,  Animate Dead, Beacon of Unrest, Living Death, Nim Deathmantle, Rise from the Grave, Stir the Grave, Restless Dreams, Soul Strings, Grim Discovery: And there’s going to be a guy that wipes the broad every other turn. Each of these cards will allow us to bring back fallen guys in one way or another. Guest they didn’t get the memo. There is no more room in Hell.

The Dead Shall Walk the Earth

Now that we have our lords out of the way we need someone for them to rule over (other than our foes).

Grave Defiler, Corpse Harvester, Graveborn Muse, Undead Gladiator: These guys will help us dig into our deck to find the guys we need.  Either we’ll search with our Harvester and Defiler or we’ll draw into our cards with our Muse and Gladiator. But be careful, the Muse will kill you if you let her (your life points taste soooo good).

Zombie Brute, Souless One, Frankenstein’s Monster: Here are our beatsticks. In a (mostly) zombie deck Souless One can get huge quick and Zombie Brute may get out of control with a fist full of cards. Frankie can be a little hard to control when he comes out with all the different kinds of counters he can make. But 3 different color dice (red for +2/0, white for +1/+1, and blue for 0/+2 for example) should help keep him straight.

Vengeful Dead, Gempalm Polluter: These two could easily take out a weakened player in one turn if you know how to use them.

Nantuko Husk, Stromgald Crusader: These two can be added as our utility guys. Pro-White on Crusader means we have something for the Mono W player plus his abilities add a nice way to get around ground stalls and get in extra damage. The Husk can get big with enough creatures but he also plays a role in helping kill things we want to dig out the yard again or we just want off the field (Here’s looking at you Muse)

 I Think I’LL Hold The Gun For Awhile…

No deck would be complete without a removal package right???

Plaguebearer, Fleshbag Marauder, Innocent Blood, Cruel Revival, Syphon Flesh: These cards help us take out problem cards. Sure most of them allow our opponents to pick and choose what dies but if all things go as planned they shouldn’t have that many options.

Damnation, Mutilate, Nefashu, Noxious Ghoul: These are our board wipers. Nefashu should take out a couple of dudes or at least bring them down enough to deal with. Noxious Ghoul can clean a board when it comes back with Balthor’s Rise effect, somewhat negating the returned ALL black and red creature clause. Damnation and Mutilate is our last resort reset buttons.

Helldozer, Withered Wretch: Sometimes lands just need to go and you may not be the only grave based deck. These two help with these issues.

I’m Not Quite Dead Yet…

Here is where we put our kinda on theme but off a little cards.

Grave Titan: Look him up. Look as hard as you want. He’s not a zombie. He will die when you bring back the whole grave with Balthor and Noxious Ghoul is in it. At least he helps Gravespawn Sovereign with the four other guy thing.

Sewer Nemesis, Stinkweed Imp, Golgari Thug, Necroplasm, Millikin, Extractor Demon, Nightmare Void, Buried Alive, Shared Trauma: This deck has a sub-Dredge theme. With Balthor at the helm, we get to dump cards with our Dredgers and fill our grave. Then when we hit 7 mana (2BBBBB) we get to drop a field full of horror.

Sensei’s Divining Top, Sol Ring, Lightning Greaves, Beseech the Queen, Liliana Vess, Crystal Ball, Extraplanar Lens, Dolmen Gate, Greed, Bad Moon: What??..... Like you don’t have a set of staples in yours.

We Have To Make It To Somewhere Safe

From here we add 26 Swamps and 7 of your favorite B mana lands like Cabal Coffers and the like and we have a deck. Are these all the cards you could use? No There are cards I would like to add but all decks are never set in stone. Feel free to change it up. Add a side broad. Take out all the zombies and replace them with vampires. Go nuts.

Well, that’s it for this one. Leave comments, suggestions, and/or ideas.  

Until next time, this is your Captain speaking…. We’re Headed into the Red Zone!!!