The deck "Zombies" could theoretically refer to any number of decks. This is primarily a tribal build, exploiting the synergies and recursion Zombies afford. In this guide we'll introduce the core engine, the supporting cast, and other cards worth considering. This is not a reanimator deck.
Why Zombies?
Simply put, this is a fun deck that wins games. It has proven surprisingly effective in the current meta, including against Tron, Titan, Snow Control, and Burn. And if you're on a budget, it's extremely easy to build a version for around $100. The full version should be no more than $500, mostly thanks to the land base. More on that later!
The Stars of the Show
The central engine of the deck revolves around five cards:
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Carrion Feeder
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Gravecrawler
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Stitcher's Supplier
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Unearth
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Diregraf Colossus
Feeder
This is the heart of our engine and for us, functions like a
Giver of Runes. Our opponent will have to focus their removal on it before anything else since we're always free to sac targets to Feeder. That doesn't mean Feeder always
will be the first target of our enemy's removal, but that's a mistake they're not like to make more than once. Feeder also supplies us with a nice combat track against lifelink decks: sacrifice your blocker before combat damage, and unless the attacking creature had trample, it will deal no damage and our opponent won't gain any life. The same holds for deathtouch.
Gravecrawler
This is Feeder's best friend, and before we continue, we shall introduce...
The Fundamental Theorem of Zombies (FTZ)
A Gravecrawler in your graveyard is as valuable as a Gravecrawler in your hand.
Corollary.
One Gravecrawler is sufficient in either your hand, graveyard, or on the battlefield.
We'll refer to FTZ constantly throughout this guide, such is its power. You should already see the first exploit: Gravecrawler + Feeder provides us with mana sink and a beefy Feeder. This combination also gets a lot of our other synergies firing off, and we'll visit those later.
Stitcher's Supplier
What a card! Stitcher makes for an excellent early blocker or fodder for Feeder. This is the primary way we'll load up our graveyard with Zombies. There's not much more to say than that.
Unearth
If Gravecrawler is Feeder's best friend, Unearth might be Sticher's. With cycling to boot, this provides cheap recursion since everything we play is no more than 3 cmc. It's a beautiful thing when you cast Stitcher on turn 1 and have Unearth ready on turn 2 to target...
Diregraf Colossus
This really is the defining card of the deck. It's not terribly powerful on its own, but it defines this as a Zombie deck and encourages us to use them. Colossus is why we don't play
Bloodghast or
Gifted Aetherborn. If you already have a Feeder and Gravecrawler, Colossus can churn out tokens equal to your number of lands. In the late game, once our library is brimming with Zombies, it's not at all hard to pop this down as an 8/8 or 10/10. Colossus is our primary win condition and makes this a little more midrange-y than aggro, as well as lending a bit of a combo element.
Any of these 1-drops is a fine turn 1 play. If you have options, however, I like Gravecrawler for turn 1. Your opponent can remove it, but unless it's
Path to Exiled (in which case we get an extra land on turn 1 - great!), we can always bring it back. Red has some exile-removal, but we don't see much in the meta. Alternatively, you could cast Feeder on turn 1 and Gravecrawler on turn 2, then swing Feeder for 3 by exploiting FTZ. Don't waste your early Unearths on the 1-drops. There are much more valuable targets we'll discuss now.
The Supporting Cast
Now that we know what this deck does, let's look at some other choices we have.
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Cryptbreaker and/or
Undead Augur
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Plague Belcher
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Geralf's Messenger
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Relentless Dead
There are of course others, and we'll get to those later.
Cryptbreaker/Undead Augur
It's crucial the deck includes at least one of these. They both have their strengths and weakness. You can get a decent draw engine going as early as turn 2 either way.
Cryptbreaker's strength is that it provides us with a mana sink and a way to put Unearth targets or unnecessary lands in our graveyard, or by FTZ, Gravecrawler. With as many 1-drops as we play, it's not hard to have 3 Zombies on turn 2, and our drawing engine is already online. Its drawback is that it precludes us from attacking, which isn't necessarily a bad thing all the time. You can always keep your Zombies untapped to block, then active Cryptbreaker before combat damage.
Augur works with no effort on our part and turns the Feeder + Gravecrawler combo into insane amounts of card advantage. You will have to keep any eye on the toll it's taking on your life total, but if you have an Augur out during a
Supreme Verdict sweep, you'll be happy. Augur's also not a bad Unearth target. It's real beauty is that it triggers on itself, so even it dies the turn you play it, it replaces itself.
Which you include will ultimately be a matter of personal preference. My preference is a combination of both.
Plague Belcher
Belcher is Colossus's cousin and a real fatty with a nice bonus to boot – it gives us an aristocrat element to the deck. This is excellent against Ensnaring Bridge builds since we can ping our opponent to death without attacking. Menace is just icing on the cake. Our deck has a lot of flexibility to exploit its "drawback" – remember FTZ? Another is the token Colossus produces when you cast Belcher. And you can always have time to sacrifice your target to Feeder before you let it get the -1/-1 counters. If you're out of a board presence (after a wipe perhaps) and have no other Zombies to cast, at least Belcher can survive its own debuff, and there are worse cards than a 3/2 with menace.
Geralf's Messenger
Messenger is probably the happiest target for Unearth, especially when you have Feeder lying around. An "undied" Messenger is also a happy target for Belcher – the +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters cancel each other out.
Relentless Dead
I think of Relentless as an Unearth contingency plan. It is a little slow but can be a happy draw after a wipe. Menace is a nice addition. I don't think you would want to run more than 2, however.
The Extras
That's it for the core Zombies. What else is at our disposal?
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Thoughtseize
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Inquisition of Kozilek
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Liliana of the Veil
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Liliana, Heretical Healer
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Defile
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Fatal Push
The Lilianas
Veil-Lili can win games by herself and will almost certainly distract your opponent while you continue amassing your Zombie army. Her discard ability is good for us, see FTZ yet again. Healer-Lili is another option. They both cost 3, and it's extremely easy to get Healer-Lili to flip the same turn you cast her. The flexibility of keeping her as a lifelink blocker could be valuable in an aggro matchup. And don't discount that Zombie she makes when she flips.
So if both Lilianas can be a turn 3 planeswalker with a discard plus ability, which one is better? I don't have the answer to this, so many running both is worth it, and thanks to latest legend rule for planeswalkers, we can. Healer-Lili has a highly valuable Unearth effect for her negative, but Veil-Lili's ultimate is entirely possible to achieve in this deck, and that can save you from dreaded sideboard hate like Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace. More on sideboarding later…
Disruption
I do believe the decks needs some disruption. One of the biggest weaknesses to this deck are highly non-linear combo decks that can assemble their pieces while we're building our Zombie army. We are losing life to our draw engine, but Thoughtseize hits more relevant threats for us.
Removal
There are two powerful options for removal for us: Fatal Push and Defile. Which you run will be determined by your meta and what you choose for your land base, which we discuss next.
The Lands
Multicolor variants are discussed below, but this version is all black. Consequently, there's nothing wrong with running only Swamps. Alternatively, you can add Cavern of Souls, Urborg, Bojuka Bog, and whatever else, but I've found that Defile works beautifully, and it's so satisfying to be able to pick something besides Blood Moon when your opponent reveals their hand to your disruption. That you don't have to break the bank just to afford your land base – arguably one of the bigger barriers to entry for the modern format – is just gravy. You can still run fetchlands with Swamps, but between Thoughtseize and the draw engine, the life may be more valuable. And I really hate Blood Moon.
So how many lands? This will of course depend on how you choose to flesh out your build. I've found that the deck's drawing engine is so efficient that I can afford to run much fewer lands than I normally would in a midrange-ish deck. But this is something you'll have to figure out for yourself, but I wouldn't recommend any more than 23.
Now that we've covered all the cards, here's my decklist.
Some other cards to consider...
Nantuko Husk
Husk is a solid consideration since it has cmc 3 (and thus can be Unearthed) and has its own free sac ability. So much of this deck revolves around your creatures dying, and you could find yourself in a situation where you're stuck until something dies. I've even targeted myself with Veil-Lili just to get a death trigger. One Husk could be the contingency plan this deck needs, especially if your opponent throws down a Chalice of the Void.
Death Baron (or any lord)
It's a bit odd that this is a tribal deck that doesn't include a lord by default, but it's also not your typical aggro deck. There are plenty lords to choose from, and they could take the place of the 3-drops we've already discussed, but at that point you're starting to build a different deck, one that would probably include Aether Vial.
Dread Wanderer
I liked this card in Standard, but I think it could be too slow in Modern. Entering tapped doesn't help Cryptbreaker, either. It could find a place in more aggressive builds.
Blasting Station
I'm hesitant to consider non-Zombies, but Blasting Station may work well in aristocratic builds.
Dark Salvation
The problem with this card is that it requires too much mana to be of any value. You can reliably get to 5 or 6 lands in most games, but that would only be 2 or 3 tokens.
Liliana's Mastery
I might consider this in a sideboard against grindier matchups, but you don't need that many Zombies on the field to outlast your opponent and win, so this feels like it would be a win-more card. It's also not a Zombie itself, so Colossus doesn't much like it, though it would pair well with the tokens it produces.
Bad Moon
I'd be much more inclined to try Bad Moon than any other non-Zombie card. You can get it out early, which makes all of our 1-drops that much more threatening. I'd say it definitely belongs in any highly aggro variant.
Rotting Regisaur
Remember what we said about FTZ? I'd be remiss at the least not to consider this card. It has an impressive body, and we're likely discarding for Lili anyway. It just doesn't have any synergy with our deck beyond being a Zombie.
A big motivation for putting this together is getting more eyeballs on the deck for fresh ideas. It already performs consistently well, but I feel like it's missing just one small component to allow it to really dominate the meta.
Multicolor Variants
One huge appeal of this deck is its utterly consistent mana base and immunity to Blood Moon. Still, there are cards in other colors that could be worth considering.
White
White gives us access to better removal with Path to Exile, which would be a necessary replacement for Defile. We also have
Wayward Servant and
Corpse Knight for the Aristocrat build.
Tidehollow Sculler provides excellent disruption, and if you sac it to Feeder before the first ability resolves, your opponent won't get it back. We also get some exile cards to deal with problematic permanents.
Blue
The Zombies of Innistrad were blue and black, and
Rooftop Storm actually creates an infinite combo situation for us with Gravecrawler, Feeder, and something else like Colossus or Belcher. Rooftop has a hefty cost, which is probably why we haven't seen the combo already, but including one as a backup plan for a blue/black midrange build (with
Diregraf Captain) could be cute.
Thought Scour can take some of the burden off Stitcher for graveyard filling. But for every non-Zombie we add, that's a Zombie we have to remove.
Red
Red really doesn't offer Zombies much.
Lightning Bolt could provide reach, and
Tymaret, the Murder King is the only red Zombie that conceivably makes sense. Maybe there's a graveyard recursion combo out there in red that I don't know about.
Green
Green is probably the most plausible color to splash. There are plenty green Zombies, and it opens access to
Abrupt Decay and
Assassin's Trophy, valuable answers to our deck's most vulnerable weaknesses, discussed later in the sideboard section.
Collected Company is an interesting possibility to create board presence, too. It takes time for Zombies to build its board presence, so some ramp via
Birds of Paradise or
Gilded Goose could be a welcome addition. My intuition is that including these cards at the expense of removing Zombies does not result in a net positive.
What if I'm on a Budget?
Fear not! Zombies offers extremely affordable flexibility. In many Modern decks, the land base is the most expensive part, but this deck can function with only Swamps.
Fleshbag Marauder is a decent alternative for Veil-Lili, and
Inquisition of Kozilek or even
Mire's Toll can replace
Thoughtseize.
Sideboard Considerations
I've added ample copies of
Pharika's Libation in my sideboard. It may not be apparent, but this deck is surprisingly resilient to graveyard hate.
Leyline of the Void and
Rest in Peace, which not only offer graveyard hate but prevent our creatures from even dying, are the worst hoses. Pharika's Libation offers a decent answer. Of course there's artifact hate to consider as well, particularly
Grafdigger's Cage,
Relic of Progenitus, and
Tormod's Crypt, but let's consider how this deck actually uses the graveyard as a resource. It all boils down to Unearth and FTZ. Grafdigger's Cage prevents our fun recursion, but we still have ample alternative win conditions. Relic of Progenitus has been proven a laughable threat. A corollary to FTZ is that we only need ONE Gravecrawler in our hand, on the battlefield, or in our graveyard to be effective.
Ashiok, Dream Render is another threat, but it's not difficult to deal with him by attacking.
Liliana of the Veil is ultimately our best answer to graveyard-hosing artifacts and enchantments. I've won many games by putting lands in one pile and nonlands in the other. Again, don't underestimate how plausible it is to reach her ultimate. Zombies can produce a lot of blockers.
The greatest threat to the deck are fast, nonlinear combo decks like Ad Nauseum and Creatures Toolbox. Zombies is a little slow to build its board/graveyard presence, and these decks don't need much time to piece together their one-turn-win combos. Mercifully, Defile deals with Heliod. And I strongly encourage good disruption. Sideboard in
Surgical Extraction or
Extirpate to prevent your opponent's combos from landing.
Kalitas is a good answer to aggro. Healer-Lili's lifelink is also nice. Against Burn, your opponent will likely be fooled into wasting their removal on your Zombies, so if you can last long enough to get a Veil-Lili out, you can probably win.
Collective Brutality is another sideboard possibility for aggro.
Force of Despair and
Leyline of the Void are personal choices based on my meta, where I see a lot of Dredge, Goblins, Elves, Merfolk, and Jund. Of course you should always tailor your sideboard to your meta.
Fin
That covers the fundamentals of the Modern Zombie archetype. There's certainly more work that needs to be done before a meta-worthy build is achieved, but I have a lot of hope for this. As always, the saving grace to tribal decks in non-rotating formats is that new expansions can provide exactly that piece that may have been missing to solidify the deck.