Turbo Zombies

[Zinch]

I've always loved the black color (since my all times favourite card: Necropotence) and Bloodghast is one of the card that has excited me more lately.

Turbo Zombies

4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Zombie Infestation
4 Entomb
4 Buried Alive
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
2 Haakon, Stromglad Scourge
4 Bloodghast
4 Smother
3 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Dard Ritual
1 Dakmor Salvage
3 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
12 Swamps

The idea of the deck is obvious I think and is a lot of fun to play (a hand with dark ritual and buried alive can result in at least 3 bloodghast in play on the second turn!)
Also, it has a lot of resilience, because if your bloodghast are extirptated (for example), you still have the haakon and the ZI, and remember that against crypts, you can activate a fetchland in response to save your bloodghasts (when playing this deck you'll find the fetchlands are unvaluable for their double landfall trigger).

The dakmor salvage is there to search with an entomb if some bloodghast rest in your 'yard and you don't have a land.

Now I'm testing this pile of cards, so I don't have MU resuls yet (in a few days I'll Edit this)

Comments, suggestions??

P.S.: Sorry for my english, is not my first language.

[Kangaxx]

Splash green for Tarmogoyf. You won't regret it.

[jimirynk]

Comments, suggestions??

Play dredge.

[Jeff Kruchkow]

What do you need Haakon for?

[Zinch]

Play dredge.

I do play dredge, but this is a completely different deck. Yes, it uses the graveyard like dredge, but not in the same way, and it have a lot more opportunities of answer grave hate as this deck doesn't dredge, it draws cards.I didn't post the SB because I'm still testing the MB, but you know, it can contain pithing needles, darkblast, and I'm meditating in splashing a color for SB options (with 6 fetchlands and the paradises (look the update) is the simplest thing, just add 2 duals and you have it).


What do you need Haakon for?

Well, I don't need him for anything, but is an another recursive creature to search with entomb or buried alive.

Update:
I've forgot absolutely about the undiscovered paradises, so they are added. Also, in testing I've found that the deck lacked something to negate the opponent's gameplay, so with all the recursion, contamination seems a good option. So the changes are:

-4 Swamps +4 Undiscovered Paradise
-1 Squee +1 Krovikan Horror
-1 Swamp and -1 Haakon +2 Contamination

[Humphrey]

why squee? AND YES; UNDISCOVERED PARADISE:

[snorlaxcom]

What do you need Haakon for?

I'd go with Undead Gladiator at this point. He pitches to make zombies and can be brought back by dicarding say Bloodghast.

[snorlaxcom]

why squee? AND YES; UNDISCOVERED PARADISE:

Because once they are buried alive they come back to hand for more free zombie tokenage maybe?????

[Galroth]

Really like the idea. Unfortunately I don't have any useful thoughts to improve the deck. I'd be interested to hear of possible lines of development for this deck. Any ideas out there?

[sunshine]

Seems like a waste to have Haakon in the deck and not take advantage of Nameless Inversion. Also, if you're running six fetches anyway there's no reason not to splash a color. At least one Badlands so you can play Squee seems ok. Better yet, only run one/two Squee and fill out the rest with Krovikan Horrors (you'll want at least two of them) - since they trigger at the end of any turn you can make more zombies off Buried Alive.

Edit: Contamination is a pretty solid idea as well. It's worth noting that the cycling on Undead Gladiator plays really nicely with Krovikan Horror too.

[SilverGreen]

As already stated, a deck like this asks for Krovikan Horrors, and has nothing to do with Haakons. 4 Squee it's too much, cut 2 of them and the 2 Haakons and run 4 Horrors.

4 Entomb + 4 Buried Alive is overkill, you'll end up with your graveyard tutors stuck in hand with no targets to use them. Also, you seem to have a plan to make use of your recurring creatures as discard fuel for Infestations, but have no ways to take advantage of all the sacrifice potential of them. Your deck simply BEGS for a Benzo's arsenal of Cabal Therapies and Contaminations, and possibly yet another way to take full advantage of the free recursion of the cheap Bloodghasts.

It would be fine to run green here too, as it would provide a quick and sinergistic clock in Tarmogoyf, as a "B plan", and would open the opportunity to run the greater foil for graveyard hate from all time, Ground Seal. Usually, a deck that suffers from graveyard hate can't run the Seal because it wouldn't be able to target its cards too (so, no reanimation, no LftL, and so on), but none of the recursive cards that were stated here targets. You could run your Horrors, Squees and Cabal Therapies under a Ground Seal unmolested, knowing your opponent's Crypts and Extirpates wouldn't ever touch them.

And man, Recurring Nightmare. Can one tell how exciting would be a deck profitably running Recurring Nightmares? Can you imagine how sexy is a Buried Alive for Bloodghast x2 and a Spirit of the Night, followed-up by a Recurring Nightmare, all of this stitched together by a Contaminated battlefield? Dude, it would be really, really funny...

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Having just read about Benzo and its extended reign for the last couple hours, I have to agree with much of the above post: it would be an excellent shell to make this deck a serious tier 2 deck, even if you don't have access to a playset of Vampiric Tutors like they did (mind you, Benzo used playsets of Buried Alive and Entomb together, so that may have been a good call).

The recursion engine could also use a reanimator-style backup plan too for monsters like Iona or Akroma, but that might preclude Ground Seal (and Tarmogoyf, but mainly Ground Seal for anti-Crypt lovin') and cancel the green splash altogether (just an idea; personally I like the green splash).

[rockout]

When I first saw the name of the thread first thought was, "someone made another dredge thread?"

I actually tried squee + zombie infestion in a deck for vintage which was a lot of fun but you get to run a lot more broken cards in vintage. Neat idea.

[Zinch]

Your deck simply BEGS for a Benzo's arsenal of Cabal Therapies and Contaminations, and possibly yet another way to take full advantage of the free recursion of the cheap Bloodghasts.

It would be fine to run green here too, as it would provide a quick and sinergistic clock in Tarmogoyf, as a "B plan", and would open the opportunity to run the greater foil for graveyard hate from all time, Ground Seal. Usually, a deck that suffers from graveyard hate can't run the Seal because it wouldn't be able to target its cards too (so, no reanimation, no LftL, and so on), but none of the recursive cards that were stated here targets. You could run your Horrors, Squees and Cabal Therapies under a Ground Seal unmolested, knowing your opponent's Crypts and Extirpates wouldn't ever touch them.

And man, Recurring Nightmare. Can one tell how exciting would be a deck profitably running Recurring Nightmares? Can you imagine how sexy is a Buried Alive for Bloodghast x2 and a Spirit of the Night, followed-up by a Recurring Nightmare, all of this stitched together by a Contaminated battlefield? Dude, it would be really, really funny...

Well, thank you all for your comments.
Actualy I'm testing with 4 contaminations, I'll post my results soon.

For the green splash, I've said previously that I'm cosidering a splash, but I don't know if the green is the best. Ground seal doesn't protect you from crypt activations because it targets the player (you), not the cars in the 'yard, it only protects against extirpate, but for that matter is better to play a CotV of one.

The list I'm testig actualy is this:

Turbo Zombies

4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Zombie Infestation
4 Entomb
4 Buried Alive
1 Krovikan Horror
2 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Haakon, Stromglad Scourge
4 Bloodghast
4 Smother
3 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Contamination

4 Dark Ritual
3 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Undiscovered Paradise
8 Swamps

[SilverGreen]

Ground seal doesn't protect you from crypt activations because it targets the player (you), not the cars in the 'yardSomeone, please, slap me in the face.

[IsThisACatInAHat?]

Another idea for splashing could be white to give you access to enlightened tutor as a utility spell to find Zombie Infestation or Contamination (you'd get the spots by running a singleton Contamination MD and sticking any extras in the board). That would also open up a cheap creature removal suite in Swords and Path, though admittedly Innocent Blood would be the same cost, on-color and essentially cost nothing because of tokens and Bloodghast.

Other cards I thought you might consider to abuse the free creatures and recursion (I spent a lot of time on this because I think the idea's really awesome and mono-black is a pet fetish for me; I tried to weed out anything too expensive or too "cool", but admittedly I got excited).
1. Reanimator package using:
Reanimate+ Exhume, extra copies in Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead
Fatty like Iona or something with shroud (obvious choice, puts opponent on a clock and probably less fanciful than any of my other ideas)
2. Stronghold Assassin for infinite creature removal
3. Sadistic Hypnotist to force opponent into perpetual topdeck mode
4. Cabal Coffers, Crypt of Agadeem, Lake of the Dead, (any combination thereof, these were the best I found)+ other creature->mana conversion cost spells to power a game-ending Drain Life/Consume Spirit, hard cast a big black creature, or super-pump a Nantuko Shade.
5. Nether Spirit for shenanigans (quick rules question: by "If Nether Spirit is the only creature in your graveyard," does it mean physically the only creature card, or only creature cards named Nether Spirit, thus allowing you to return multiples?)
6. Hecatomb for mana-> damage conversion (probably danger of cool things and probably sucks, just thought I'd mention it)
7. Innocent Blood for cheap, free removal
8. Recurring Nightmare as per SilverGreen's suggestion (slower and more expensive than reanimation, but no life cost and reusable)
9. I don't think such a card exists (and I can't figure out the right combination of keywords, so if someone better with Gatherer could help that'd be great), but if there's a targeted Lobotomy effect that searches your library and puts the cards in your graveyard rather than exiling them, that would be carte blanche to switch Zombie Infestation (a pretty weak card) for Bridges (then you'd really have turbo zombies). After mulling over this deck and how it works for a long while, I think Zombie Infestation is something of a long-term control card. Even with multiple Krovikan Horrors, you're not going to be making that many zombies and multiple Infestations have no benefit as do multiple Bridges.

Providing that's not possible and we're stuck with Zombie Infestation, it's obvious Dredge is easily the superior token generator engine, so this deck has to focus on spending its tokens as resources rather than finishers in order to not be strictly inferior. Cards powered by creature sacrifice could really give the deck the kind of zombie-esque inevitability that the deck seems to be trying for. Since the reanimation combo is so natural, I think the best route would be to try and use the control shell to protect a combo finish (with Drain Life or a fat creature) as a secondary win condition and overwhelming card advantage from recurring Jitte-ed Bloodghasts as a primary win condition. I'm still not done perusing the Gatherer, so there may be other interesting win conditions that haven't been suggested, like lord effects to make zombies useful.

There are really so many avenues this deck can take, so it'll obviously be necessary to choose a focus and build around it. I like the Contamination/ Infestation/ Krovikan Horror soft lock, but the deck still needs a bomb win condition (or several smaller ones; Jitte+ Bloodghast is compact and doable) to put your opponent on a clock. That may also be a reason to splash green for Tarmogoyf.

Edit:
For potential sideboard choices, there are several options that seem like auto-includes:
1. Combo will rape your face, even with a strong targeted discard suite. The deck isn't as simultaneously fast and disruptive as, say, Eva Green which can put combo decks on a short enough clock that they won't recover from the early barrage of disruption spells. Chalice @0 would solve a lot of problems, but I wouldn't include more than 3 because multiples are effectively useless since Chalice @1 or 2 hoses this deck.
2. Sadistic Sacrament could be useful first to prevent a fast win off Ad Nauseam, then later in the game with mana accelerants to exile all of their win conditions and close them out.
3. To protect your graveyard, Pithing Needle is the easiest choice but also probably the worst because of how much the card sucks. If you end up splashing, consider something with artifact removal. I personally like green rather than red because red will encourage the deck to be more tempo oriented, which it clearly doesn't want. Green has Tarmogoyf to muck up the ground and obviously Grip as a natural foil to countertop and grave hate, which supplements the control route.
4. The SB may also be the place to put your utility suite. Extra Stronghold Assassins or Sadistic Hypnotists immediately come to mind for removal and discard respectively, but I'll keep searching for other useful gems.