"Creepy Crawling in the Dark with Zombies…"

"I am back...."

Creepy Crawling in the Dark with Zombies…

By:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

     So it has begun…The Dark Ascension Spoilers are among us. There are now officially 13 spoiled cards. Wizards of the coast have been really tight on how they have managed to control any leaks of the products this time. I believe they don’t want this to be a New Phyrexia. Fans of the game can only drool in anticipation and talk to each other about rumors over the holiday. Now we see some of the cards that we would be playing in the pre-release and it is a very exciting time again.

     There are several cards that are great out there but 2 of the exciting cards are Grave Crawler and Zombie Apocalypse with that being said people now know what monster tribe I have chosen to foster. Yup no team Edward (vampire) or team Jacob (werewolves) or team Ghostbusters (geists) for me. Let me deal with dead guts and things that love me for my brain. (Even if they just want to eat it.)

"Zooooombie Apocalypse!!!!"

   

   While Black has always had a slew of creature removal and mass removal effects this black sorcery has the addition of a win condition. In some ways Zombie Apocalypse is a weaker version of Living Death. It has certain weaknesses, it cost one more mana to cast, the creatures it summons from the graveyard aren’t tapped and it should be zombies. It is also limited to when you are fighting humans in the standard format. Human decks like the Gavony tokenators are pretty strong right now and will gain more momentum with additional key cards from this set.

      I guess Zombie Apocalypse is an answer to that particular type of deck and even if faced with the other creature tribes there are still strong zombies that can instantly help you once it gets back into play like the Skin Render who always wants to share a few -1/-1 counters around, with 4 of these popping on the table at the same time it’s a massacre or the Unbreathing Hordes that are virtually unburnable and can finish off the opponent on the next turn. I will give this card a try as soon as it is available just to say its name as I summon it. Zooooombie Apocalypse! Then I’m going to turn on my plants vs. Zombie ring tone for effect.

    Another card that catches my fancy is something that Liliana Vess hints at creating herself. It’s the Grave Crawler and hooboy is it an ugly one and it literally crawls too, it’s tough being a zombie with no legs. The resiliency of this thing reminds me of Bloodghast and you can be sure that it’s going to be used in a lot of Morbid shenanigans in limited. Haven’t seen much of the morbid mechanic yet but there are a couple that are interesting. Imagine the flexibility of a creature from the grave yard, an instant offensive threat when you have other zombies crawling along with it. You could imagine that this would be a great combo piece with Zombie Apocalypse. The swing is just going to be too much.

Well that’s enough of Zombies for now. Back to the real world.