Deck Analysis 4.
Looking at the Zombie Deck.

By ~ShineSoldier~

Hello once again.
It’s been a while since my last ‘Deck Analysis’ article, but since I got a lot of positive feedback on those articles, I’ll write some more.

But before I start with this article, I would like to let you all know that I made a mistake in my ‘Lockdown’ Deck article. I assumed that Ojama Tokens had 0 DEF instead of 1000 DEF, which of course is one heck of a stupid mistake.

Well, now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s hop onto this article’s subject: Zombies
Last Tuesday, I got a mail from Nick and he wanted to see a Zombie deck here.
So, that’s what we’re going to do.

Like always, I’m going to sit and think about what this decktype is good at.
Well, in this case, it would be Speed.
That’s right. Zombie Decks provide a lot of speed, which is defenitely good.
A second thing that Zombie Decks can do really well is coming back from the Graveyard.

But let’s not proceed to that point already.
First, it’s time to take a look at the cards that provide this Speed of the Zombies.


Pyramid Turtle
Earth / Zombie
Effect
4*

“When this card is sent from the field to the Graveyard as a result of battle, you can search your deck for a Zombie-type monster with a DEF of 2000 or less and Special Summon it on your side of the field in face-up Attack or Defense Position. Shuffle the Deck afterwards.”

ATK 1200 / DEF 1400


Call of the Mummy
Spell / Continous

“When there are no monsters on your side of the field, you can Special Summon one Zombie-type monster from your hand. You can only use this effect once per turn.”


Those two cards are the main cards of the Zombie Deck that provide it’s huge speed.
Pyramid Turtle is obviously a true staple in this deck. It can search out ANY Zombie-monster, with the exception of Despair from the Dark and Dark Dust Spirit, but they won’t be in this deck anyway. His 1400 defense means that it won’t be very difficult for him to be destroyed in battle, so that helps.
Call of the Mummy allows you to Special Summon a Zombie monster when you’ve got no other monsters on the field. Since Zombie-decks have a lot of tributes, this card works really well with them.
Onto the next thing in which Zombie decks are good at: Recursion.
They’ve got a lot of cards that can bring back your lost monsters or monsters that come back out of themselves. Let’s take a closer look at the two cards that can do this at best.


Vampire Lord
Dark / Zombie
Effect
5*

“Each time this card inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent, decare 1 card type (Monster, Spell or Trap). Your opponent selects 1 card of that type of his/her Deck and sends it to the Graveyard. Also, when this card is destroyed and sent to your Graveyard by your opponent's card effect, it is Special Summoned to the field during your next Standby Phase.”

ATK 2000 / DEF 1500


Book of Life
Spell / Normal

“Special Summon 1 Zombie-Type monster from your Graveyard in face-up Attack or Defnse Position and remove 1 monster in your opponent's Graveyard from play.”


Vampire Lord is in my opinion the heart of the Zombie Deck. It’s a golden oldie from Dark Crisis and one of the best tribute monsters ever. In a Zombie Deck, he just rocks.
The release of Cyber Dragon however, really hurted this card, since that card can just be Special Summoned when Vampire Lord is out and kill him with great ease.
Book of Life is one heck of a good card in Zombie Decks, basically a Monster Reborn with a little bonus: removing one of your opponent’s monsters in their Graveyard from play.
Defenitely deserves his spot in a Zombie Deck.

Now that we’ve looked at those 4 cards, let’s see what other Zombie-related cards there are.


Spirit Reaper
Dark / Zombie
Effect
3*

“This monster is not destroyed as a result of battle at any time, although damage calculation is applied normally. When this card is specifically designated as a target of the effect of a Magic, Trap, or Effect Monster Card, this card is immediately destroyed. When this card attacks your opponent’s Life Points directly, 1 card is randomly selected from your opponent’s hand and discarded to the Graveyard.”

ATK 300 / DEF 200


Ryu Kokki
Dark / Zombie
Effect
6*

“If a monster that battles with this monster is a Warrior or Spellcaster-Type monster, destroy that monster at the end of the Damage Step.”

ATK 2400 / DEF 2000


Patrician of Darkness
Dark / Zombie
Effect
5*

“As long as this monster remains face-up on the field, the controller of this card selects the targets of his/her opponent's attacks.”

ATK 2000 / DEF 1400


Three monsters that are worth playing in a Zombie Deck.
I didn’t include Dark Dust Spirit and Despair from the Dark with them, because they aren’t worth playing in my opinion. Now, let’s start with the deeper looks.
Spirit Reaper is a monster with pathetic stats, yet he’s seen in every single deck at the moment. Why? Because of his amazing effect! He can’t be destroyed in battle at anytime, so he’s one heck of a good defensive wall.
With the rising playability of Warriors and the release of Spellcaster’s Judgement, Ryu Kokki will be more useful than ever before. It has exactly 2000 defense, so Pyramid Turlte can summon it. His 2400 attack is really something, so this card deserves his spot also.
Our third card is Patrician of Darkness, one card that has been looked over all the time. However, he works really well in a Zombie deck. Why? Turn all your opponent’s attacks to Spirit Reapers to make ‘em useless, or turn them to Pyramid Turtle to summon your beloved Vampire Lord. That sounds sweet to me.

Now it’s time to add some other support cards that weren’t made specifically for Zombie Decks, but work really well in them.
Now what were Zombie Decks’ qualities?
Oh yeah, speed and recursion.
Let’s begin with Speed.
Decks that provide a lot of speed usually suffer bad hands, since they can summon many monsters in one turn and such.
Zombie Decks are no exception. With Call of the Mummy and Book of Life, you’ll be out of cards in your hand in no time. To prevent this from happening, we’re going to add ‘Card of Safe Return’.


Card of Safe Return
Spell / Continous

“Each time a monster from your Graveyard is Special Summoned, you can draw one card from your deck.”


With this card, you’ll utilize the recursion ability of the Zombies to the max.
With Vampire Lord and Book of Life, you can summon those Zombies over and over again, so this card will provide great advantages in this decktype.

A second problem that Speed brings with itself, is heavy Field Control.
Now you will probably be wondering why this is bad.
Well, Field Control of course isn’t a bad thing, but when you’ve got 4 monsters out at the same time, you ARE taking a great risk of getting hit by Dark Hole or Torrential Tribute.
This is why we’ll add ‘My Body as a Shield’.


My Body as a Shield
Spell / Quick-Play

“You can activate this card when your opponent activates a card that has the effect of destroying one or more monsters on the field. Pay 1500 Life Points to negate the effect of that card and destroy it.”


A card that forms reliable protection for your Zombies.
It can negate any card that would destroy a monster on the field, so it negates the oftenly played Smashing Ground, Sakuretsu Armor, Bottomless Trap Hole, etc.
Of course, this card won’t do anything good for your Vampire Lord, since it doesn’t really matter if he gets destroyed by a card effect.
However, he does need some protection to keep out a little bit longer himself.
Since battle is the only way to get rid of this card (or by removing it from play), you could add a Rush Recklessly.


Rush Recklessly
Spell / Quick-Play

“Increase the ATK of one face-up monster on the field by 700 points until the end phase of the turn in which this card is activated.”


Now this is a really underrated card in my opinion. Boosting one monster’s attack by 700 for one turn isn’t good, that’s right. But the fact is, this card is a Quick-Play Spell Card, which means it can be activated in the damage step, even in your opponent’s. What I’m trying to say is that this card could be even better than Sakuretsu Armor if you use it correctly. And above all that, you will have something to laugh about when some Cookie Cutter decks tries to attack your Vampire Lord with their Cyber Dragon or such.

Now that we’ve looked at some standard Zombie-cards and their ‘standard’ support, let’s dig some deeper and seek for more and original support cards that can’t be obtained just by simply buying one of the Structure Decks. What fun would it be to run a deck that only runs commons?

When we take a deeper look, we will notice that Zombies need Hand Management. They summon a lot of monsters very quickly and thus decreasing their Hand Size very quickly too. We’ve already said that Card of Safe Return was good in getting more cards, but the problem with Card of Safe Return is that it’s a Continous Spell, meaning that he’s very vulnerable to S/T removal.
Now what other cards do we know that can provide decent Hand Management?
Of course, Morphing Jar comes to mind, but he’s not very original, is he?
There would be no reason not to run him, so he will be in this deck as well, but what we need is originality, thus we’re looking further.

When looking at the spoiler of Pharaonic Guardian, we don’t see many interesting things for this deck’s Hand Management. However, when looking a little bit closer, you’ll notice a little common card in it that can provide massive advantages with the right protection cards.
That’s right, I’m talking about our old pal, Des Lacooda.


Des Lacooda
Earth / Zombie
Effect
3*

“Once per turn during your Main Phase, you can flip this card into face-down defense position. When this card is succesfully Flip Summoned, draw one card from your deck.”

ATK 500 / DEF 600


First of all, you’ll see that this card happens to be a Zombie too, which makes him fit in this deck even more.
Whenever you Flip Summon him, you draw one card. That means when you Flip Summon him once, you’ll get one card, meaning that ‘he paid for himself’. When flipping him twice (which becomes much easier due its first effect), you’ve gain a +1 advantage.
This card doesn’t work with some protection, and since Rush Recklessly won’t protect this guy, we’ll need to add some other protection.....or maybe we won’t?

Remember one of the Zombie-monsters I’ve talked about earlier?
Maybe you’ll have a better idea of whom I’m talking when I give you his name...
I’m talking about Patrician of Darkness.
When you combine Des Lacooda with Patrician of Darkness, you’re able to draw away all the attacks that target the little Zombie and turn them to your way much stronger Patrician of Darkness, which WILL get help from Rush Recklessly.

So that’s one thing that can provide some Hand Management.
Now when you want to gain Hand Control, you might just want to discard cards from your opponent’s hand, to give you some advantage as well.
So, which card is perfectly suited for this job?
We’ve already got Spirit Reaper, but another card would be very nice.
Let’s try adding a Robbin’ Goblin.


Robbin Goblin
Trap / Continous

“Whenever one of your monsters inflicts battle damage to your opponent’s Life Points, discard one card from your opponent’s hand at random.”


What you will notice almost immediately, is that this card works very well with Rush Recklessly. Imagine the face of your opponent when they think they will destroy your Vampire Lord with their Cyber Dragon, but instead, they’re losing that Cyber Dragon, take 600 points of damage and lose a card from their hand!
Only run one of this thing at max, since you won’t have enough space to include two of them.

I think you won’t have that much trouble to mantain some Hand Control now.

Let’s go ahead.
We’ve come to the part where we’re going to look at the battlefield itself.
Zombies don’t have to bother about getting Field Advantage. Call of the Mummy, Pyramid Turtle and Book of Life will make sure you’ve got enough monsters on your field.
What Zombie Decks do need to do, is keeping that Field Advantage, and not let all their monsters be wiped out by a single Dark Hole or Torrential Tribute.
We’ve already discussed ‘My Body as a Shield’, which does a great job.
Another card that might be interesting is Magic Drain.


Magic Drain
Trap / Counter

“You can activate this card when your opponent activates a Magic Card. If your opponent cannot immediately discard a Magic Card from his/her hand, negate the activation of the Magic Card and destroy it.”


This’ll fit into this deck, because it adds protection AND some sort of Hand Control. The best part is, that if you’ve already discarded a lot of cards out of your opponent’s hand, you might get a free negation...and that’s awesome.
Good thing to include in this deck for sure.

So, we found ways to gain Field Advantage as well as keeping it:
Call of the Mummy, Book of Life, Vampire Lord, Pyramid Turtle, My Body as a Shield, Magic Drain.

We’ve also found ways to gain and keep the Hand Advantage:
Card of Safe Return, Robbin Goblin, Des Lacooda.

Speed is something that Zombie Decks automatically have.

Monster Removal might still be a problem, even though we’ve got Rush Recklessly.
So what are we going to do about that?
Simple.
Include some solid 1-for-1’s, like Sakuretsu Armor, Smashing Ground and Exiled Force.
The fact that Exiled Force will waste your Normal Summon for a turn doesn’t really matter in this deck, since it has got a lot of ways to Special Summon its monsters.

Now that we’ve looked at all the aspects of a Zombie-deck, it’s time to construct the deck itself.
Here we go:

Monsters: 20x
Vampire Lord
Vampire Lord
Patrician of Darkness
Patrician of Darkness
Ryu Kokki
Pyramid Turtle
Pyramid Turtle
Pyramid Turtle
Spirit Reaper
Spirit Reaper
Spirit Reaper
Nimble Momonga
Nimble Momonga
Nimble Momonga
Magician of Faith
Morphing Jar
Breaker the Magical Warrior
Magical Merchant
Magical Merchant
Exiled Force

Spells: 17x
Book of Life
Book of Life
Book of Life
Call of the Mummy
Card of Safe Return
My Body as a Shield
My Body as a Shield
Rush Recklessly
Rush Recklessly
Smashing Ground
Smashing Ground
Nobleman of Crossout
Heavy Storm
Mystical Space Typhoon
Brain Control
Dark Hole
Snatch Steal

Traps: 6x
Torrential Tribute
Call of the Haunted
Sakuretsu Armor
Sakuretsu Armor
Magic Drain
Dust Tornado

Total Cards: 43 cards


Final Explanations:
- The Nimble Momonga’s are in to increase your Life Points so that you can pay for the costs of My Body as a Shield. It provides tribute bait for your high amount of tribute monsters also.
- Breaker the Magical Warrior is in, because this deck needed more S/T removal, since Mobius isn’t in it.
- Brain Control and Snatch Steal are to use your opponent’s monsters as tributes for your tribute monsters, in case you can’t bring them out in any other way.
- I left Des Lacooda out. Although I think it’s a very good card, he was just not strong enough to fit in this deck. When playtesting it, I discovered that more tribute bait was needed, and Des Lacooda isn’t suited for this job.
- Magical Merchants are in, to abuse ‘Book of Life.’ It dumps your Tribute monster and with the maybe drawn ‘Book of Life’, you can get them right back. When flipped, it does provide you a +1 advantage.
- I also left Robbin Goblin out. This is because the deck was short of defense, even with the defensive walls like Spirit Reaper. If you would like to include it, feel free to do it, but as far as my playtests showed me, you’d better let Hand Management to what it is and focus on the defense more.
- Even though Robbin Goblin is out, Magic Drain will still form a very nice addition to this deck.

Some final notes: This deck was made by using as less as possible ‘staple’ cards. I didn’t include Mobius and D. D. Assailant for example, just because I hate those Cookie Cutter Cards. I did include 3 Spirit Reapers, but that’s because they fit the theme perfectly and provide an extra wall of solid defense.

Depending on your own playstyle, you might want to replace the ‘My Body as a Shields’ with ‘Solemn Judgments’. Solemn Judgment provides ultimate defense, but has a pretty hefty Life Points cost. It’s up to you.

If you are a fan of 40-cards decks, leave out the Nimble Momonga’s. The Magical Merchants should stay in, even with a Monster count of only 17. Their purpose in the deck becomes just speeding up the deck, instead of dumping monsters.

As said earlier, you could add the cards that I mentioned to provide you with better Hand Management. However, when you include them, you will find out soon enough that you won’t have any defense to protect yourself. The Magical Merchant Dump Strategy works really well, so I would recommend this deck instead of the Hand Management Deck.
Again, the choice is up to you.

I know that I’m writing a lot of notes down, but that’s because the cards in this deck most of all depend on your own personal playstyle. If you like control, include Robbin Goblin and leave out Nimble Momonga. If you like speed, use this deck etc...
The point is: Zombie decks can be seen in many different types, and this is just one of them. Make some adjustments like the ones I mentioned above and create the decktype that suits you most.


I hope you liked the article.
If you’ve got any questions, ideas or comments,
mail me them at slam25@hetnet.nl

‘Til next time,
~ShineSoldier~