[Deck] Zombie Control

[TheAlpha]

ZoCo: just a stupid idea or a deck with potential?
Just by coincidence I found this card, Zombie infestation, on a random magic site. My first reaction: ‘OMG that card is cool, lets make a deck with it!’. At the same time, a friend of mine was already busy with a Zombie Infestation deck but he dropped the idea to go hang with kobolds and skullclamps. I picked up the Zombie Infestation idea and started building a deck on MWS.

The Decklist:
Zombie Control a.k.a. ZoCo
Lands:
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
2 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
8 Island

Creatures:
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
2 Krovikan Horror
1 Wonder

Draw & Tutors:
4 Brainstorm
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Intuition
3 Cunning Wish
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Demonic Tutor

Counters & Disruption:
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy

Kill:
4 Zombie Infestation

Sideboard:
1 Intuition
1 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Deep Analysis
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Snuff Out
1 Misdirection
1 Smother
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Chalice of the Void

Choices of unusual cards:
Squee & Krovikan Horror: cards that make the infestations work. I started with 4 squees only but during the testing I wanted more self-returning creatures. Horror seems a quite obvious choice.

Wonder: making zombies fly off an Intuition usually is very surprising. Suddenly you can chump block Exalteds and all kind of other stuff. I’m still testing this but so far it works quite good.

Intuition: in this deck, Intuition is just great! It gets you AK’s, Squees or Therapies. Especially therapies are very good against control when you have a infestation in play. Since Intuition hardly ever gets countered, throwing 4 ( ! ) Therapies at a control players head win games.

Zombie Infestation: first of all, the card is cool! It also proved to be good since a lot of decks can’t handle the rush of zombies. Most control decks only play 1 disenchant effect in the SB so 4 infestations can really hurt. I had good results against tangle wires, smoke stacks etc. because you have quite a number of permanents in no time.

How I usually play the deck:
I usually start with a duress or a therapy. Now you can decide whether to play a second turn zombie infestation (when opponents hand isn’t that interesting) or keep mana open to drain. Third turn is usually a turn in which you play a tutor, infestation or an intuition of a mana drain or the 3 mana you’ll still have. Turn 4+ is usually a combination of disrupting, countering and making zombies.  

Problems:
Super fast combo like belcher and really fast aggro.

Questions:
Is this deck stupid or does it have any potential?
How to improve the combo and aggro matchups pre-SB?
Should I change my posting style in any way? This is one of my first topics so tips are welcome.

Tips, discussion and suggestions are very welcome!

[StarOrc]

First things, It doesn't look like you have enough lands to me. I would seriously consider taking out something, probably the therapies, and adding at least 3 more land. Having only 19 mana sources is just asking to be mana-screwed.... never mind if you play against wastes or LD.

+2 Island
+1 Stripmine

-3 Cabal Therapy

Overall the deck looks very similar to Hulk Smash, this could be a good thing, and looks like it would play somewhat similarly(with a slower win condition).  Hulk typically doesn't run 3 Cunning Wish or Vamp Tutor and I think you don't really need Wonder, if you are chump blocking E.Angel then your in trouble. I would suggest the following:

+3 Deep Analysis (from the board, BTW if you think Intuition for Therapy is good vs control try DA... its 8 cards and 4 spells... control can't really handle that)

-1 Wonder
-1 Vamp Tutor (Move to the Board)
-1 Cunning Wish

Last thing for the Maindeck is the non-inclusion of Yawgmoth's Will.... this card is SOO broken. I can't see any reason why someone wouldn't run this is any deck.

+1 Yawmoth's Will

-1 Zombie Infestation (You don't really need 4... with all the card draw you will find one and with enough time to win)


I also think your SB could use some work.

Current Sideboard:
1 Intuition
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Snuff Out
1 Misdirection
1 Smother
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Spots

As a personal opionion I would really like to see you splash red for REB and Fire/Ice, but if you don't have the duals we can work with this.

I don't really like Chalice or Skeletal Scrying in the board. Chalice seems like something that would be used against you and would hinder your decks performance if you played it. I think there are better options than Scrying for this type of deck, the best two probably being Gush (+3 cards in hand = +1.5 Zombies) and Fact or Fiction.

+1 Gush
+1 Fact or Fiction
+3 Spots

-4 Chalice of the Void
-1 Skeletal Scrying

The next thing I would like to address is FCG and just straight goblins or burn or other Red decks in your meta. Blue Blast is really good against these decks... probably WAY better than duress. So I think I would probably play 4 of them in the board.

+3 Blue Elemental Blast

-3 Spots

The last things I would suggest for your Board are 1 Echoing Truth as an answer to anything and 1 Capsize as a recurring answer to anything.

+1 Capsize (Gets around Chalice for 2, which kinda shuts your deck down.)
+1 Echoing Truth

-2 Spots


That leaves us with this as a list and board:

Zombie Control a.k.a. ZoCo
Lands:
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
2 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
10 Island
1 Strip Mine

Creatures:
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
2 Krovikan Horror

Draw & Tutors:
4 Brainstorm
3 Deep Analysis
2 Intuition
2 Cunning Wish
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Counters & Disruption:
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
 
Kill:
3 Zombie Infestation

Sideboard:
1 Intuition
4 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Capsize
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gush
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Snuff Out
1 Misdirection
1 Smother
1 Chain of Vapor

Overall I think the changes that I have suggested will help you perform better with this deck on a whole, while keeping the main premise of the deck intact. If you have any reasons why the cards I have changed need to stay or why you don't like what I have suggested just let me know and I will explain why I feel this makes the deck stronger in more detail.

Star

[Marton]

You might want to have a look at ensnaring bridge.

EDIT:
You might want to try to play with circular logic. It *is* weird to make a zombie and counter a spell, but a 'almost free' counter is always a good thing. I don't think I would run 4x considering that it is only really good once you have a zombie infestation into play.

[TheAlpha]

I'm now testing the following list:

Lands:
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
2 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
10 Island
1 Strip Mine

Creatures:
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Krovikan Horror
1 Wonder (6 self returning was to much and I personally just like wonder. It won me many games today vs. Fish)

Draw & Tutors:
4 Brainstorm
3 Deep Analysis (they are indeed better, also pitchable)
2 Intuition
2 Cunning Wish
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Counters & Disruption:
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Duress

Kill:
3 Zombie Infestation

Sideboard:
1 Intuition
4 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Capsize
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gush
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Snuff Out
1 Misdirection
1 Smother
1 Chain of Vapor

Thnx for your help StarOrc, mad props .

Ensnaring bridge isn't that good, most of the time you have some counters etc. in hand so it isn't usefull enough.

[The Grim Reaper]

This deck needs Bazaar of Bagdad. You're already running the squees, why not run a powerful draw engine along with them? Also good with krovikan horror!

I'm not sure what you should remove though...

[TheAlpha]

This deck needs Bazaar of Bagdad. You're already running the squees, why not run a powerful draw engine along with them? Also good with krovikan horror!

I'm not sure what you should remove though...

I dont run bazaars for the simple reason that I don't have them   .

[Toad]

This is a Psychatog deck with an inferior win condition (Psychatog is a one turn kill with Berserk), a weaker draw engine (one less Intuition), less sideboard options (Red is really hot) and suboptimal cards (Squees).

[TheAlpha]

This is a Psychatog deck with an inferior win condition (Psychatog is a one turn kill with Berserk), a weaker draw engine (one less Intuition), less sideboard options (Red is really hot) and suboptimal cards (Squees).

Sure it is, I really agree. But you just seem to miss one thing: I made this deck because I want to do something with zombie infestation, not to make a fake Tog deck.

[Toad]

Then I'm moving this to Newbie since It uses suboptimal cards on purpose.

[Nubi]

I think this deck looks very interesting, and I might consider proxying it up and trying it. However first I'd like to contribute to this thread.

First of all I don't agree about Deep Analysis. TheAlpha says he has trouble with fast combo or aggro. DA really doesn't help those matchups compared to cabal therapy.
Against combo the therapy is just better for its huge disruptive effect.
Against aggro the huge life loss from the DAs will kill you even faster. (we're talking almost 50 % of your starting life for the 3 DAs)

I never really liked DA, mostly due to my highly aggro metagame.

I'd suggest getting the therapy back in, as DA is only better against control, which you didn't mention as a bad matchup.

Also I'm curious whether the mana base could maintan a third colour: red.
First of all it'd give you the nasty REB/pyroblast. Second of all you could replace krovikan horror with the IMHO better death spark.
While Death Spark costs 1 mana to return to your hand, you can use it for other stuff than just discarding to zombie infestation. For instance it kills welders (and yes they will protect their welders, but you recur the spark, so...)
Or maybe just run the spark SB for whenever you face a welder deck.

Well those were my 2 cents.

[TheAlpha]

Also I'm curious whether the mana base could maintan a third colour: red.

I don't think adding red is a problem, just take out some basic island, add 4 volcanics and maybe an extra fetch.