Zombies is a deck that hasn’t really materialized during this trip to Innistrad. There’s plenty of powerful cards like Relentless Dead and Diregraf Colossus, but the deck is just a little anemic. The deck doesn’t really have the staying power or aggressive slant. Eldritch Moon might change all of that. Powerful cards like Cryptbreaker and Gisa and Geralf give the deck more staying power, and the ability to play more of an attrition game. Take a look at how Ross Merriam thinks the deck may look in the coming weeks:

Blue-Black Zombies ? Eldritch Moon | Ross Merriam

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Distended Mindbender
• 1 Stitchwing Skaab
• 2 Wailing Ghoul
• 4 Cryptbreaker
• 4 Diregraf Colossus
• 4 Gisa and Geralf
• 4 Prized Amalgam
• 4 Relentless Dead

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 4 Liliana, the Last Hope

• Spells (8)
• 1 Ruinous Path
• 3 Grasp of Darkness
• 4 Dark Salvation

• Lands (24)
• 2 Island
• 12 Swamp
• 2 Drownyard Temple
• 4 Choked Estuary
• 4 Sunken Hollow

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
• 3 Fleshbag Marauder
• 3 Negate
• 4 Dead Weight
• 4 Transgress the Mind

Buy This Deck

The biggest question for this deck is whether Cryptbreaker is real. Is this the next Pack Rat? The card is still resilient to removal spells and does something powerful. If you can keep Cryptbreaker in play, you can turn excess lands and removal spells into more Zombies, which then become more cards. Even if your opponent has sweepers to get Cryptbreaker off the board, Gisa and Geralf lets you get the card advantage engine rolling again.

All of this ignores the fact that Relentless Dead and Prized Amalgam give you a persistent and sizable board presence, which can let you apply pressure consistently, even through removal and sweepers. You can even keep returning Diregraf Colossus to play, which can be a monstrous threat or help generate even more creatures. This ability to go either big or wide is valuable, since it gives you the ability to customize your game plan depending on whether you’re trying to beat sweepers, spot removal, or large creatures.

The last card that’s interesting is Dark Salvation. This is a card that scales up over the course of the game to both kill a creature and generate a board presence. However, it also is just an efficient removal spell whenever you’ve got a board presence. Given that many of your threats are very good at keeping creatures in play, this has a chance to just be Tragic Slip most of the time. Only time will tell if this strategy is too slow to really keep up with decks like Humans, or has the staying power to fight against Seasons Past. Regardless, I’m excited to see what this deck is made of.