"Ghoulcaller Gisa: Zombie Party Uprising"

"Ghoulcaller Gisa: Zombie Party Uprising"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

GhoulCaller Gisa aka Geralf's sister is getting her own card in the upcoming Commander 2014 set. Now for 5 mana and a 3/4 creature she seems like a big commitment for a little gain. However since we would be making a lot of Zombies I decided that she was worth checking out. She would be a welcome addition to existing Grixis decks or even Blue/Black zombie decks that have Grimgrin as commander.

GhoulCaller Gisa for a measly one mana activation and a creature sacrifice(of course , you need to break something to hatch many Zombies) puts X 2/2 Black Zombie creatures in the battlefield where X is the sacrificed creatures power. Now a lot of people would ask why you would want to sacrifice a big creature you control to get zombies, I would counter with another question what if the creature you were sacrificing was not your own? Yeah...

There are a lot of effects in both red and blue(grixis combo right here) that would let you capture somebody Else's big creature and then you could sacrifice it for a lot of zombies. Traitorous Act and a lot of the "you control enchanted permanent" auras from Blue will get you what you need.Enslave from Black also comes to mind.GhoulCaller Gisa will at least give you something for nothing if in case your opponent breaks your slaving aura or if a spell would return the creature to your opponent once your turn ends.

GhoulCaller Gisa would also fit into Golgari(Black/Green) decks. Green has access to a lot of the games biggest creatures and could easily cast them much easier than any other color. Imagine having a reanimated or hard casted Krosan Cloudscraper , a 13/13 monstrosity that would demand a 4 forest sacrifice in your next upkeep. If you are the same as me , 4 sacrificed forests is a bit steep so I would just sacrifice the guy and just settle for the 13 , 2/2 Zombie tokens from GhoulCaller Gisa thank you very much. They happen to represent 26 points of damage. If your opponent takes notice of this in your EDH games , they would be able to calculate that you could end any opponents life in 2 swings.

Of course I have another existing deck that would also want GhoulCaller Gisa. It is a Dimir Mill deck that has a Consuming Aberration as its resident superstar. Sometimes it feels great to win with a 100/100 Consuming Aberration from all the milling that your opponents have been doing , I guess it would feel even better if you had a 100 2/2 Zombies swarming in against everyone for the win. Now talk about a horde of undead. The only thing that could really ruin my day with these zombies is if someone suddenly casts a well timed pyroclasm...in an EDH game what are the odds though?

Another set of creatures that you would want to sacrifice to Ghoulcaller Gisa are those that are on the way to the graveyard or have a big effect when they come from the grave. Creatures with the Unearth mechanice like Kederekt Leviathan comes into mind. Even Scuttling Doom Engine that could give you 6 points of redirected damage to finish an opponent or maybe a Protean hulk that not only gives you 6 2/2 Zombie tokens but you could find creatures that would have a sum total of 6 mana to join the Zombie Uprising as well. Think about that evil thought for a moment. You could have Cemetery Reaper, Death Baron , Lord of the Undead , Adaptive Automaton and even Mikaeus the Unhallowed on your side in an instant making your 2/2's into potentially bigger threats! Evil.

I would also like to point out that the zombie tokens GhoulCaller Gisa produces are not your typical Innistrad zombies which always comes into play tapped. They come in ready to rumble (If you have anything that gives your creatures have haste like Urabrask the Hidden for example) or ready to defend for you if they don't have haste. I wonder if they would come up with a Geralf card soon and one can only wonder what kind of zombies he would produce. In the meantime though I would love to keep in experimenting with GhoulCaller Gisa.