(Myrkul, Lord of Bones | Art by Isis)

Terrorize Your Pod With Zombies

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Recross the Paths, the series that gives commanders a typal twist. For this installment of the series, I wanted to build a deck using a card that has been on my mind for the last few weeks: Birthing Pod. Evolution strategies, which revolve around sacrificing a creature to put into play another one with a higher mana value from your deck, have always fascinated me. I think they add a layer of surprise and controlled chaos that can really make your games unforgettable.

Yet, I incurred in some foreseeable problems: what kindred strategy wants to play such a card? Additionally, what commander should lead such a deck?

Answering the first question, I soon thought about Zombies, a creature type that usually wants to put creatures in the graveyard. This can be a powerful secondary theme of the deck, considering you have to sacrifice creatures to evolve them.

Then, looking at the second interrogative, at first I took Yarok, the Desecrated into consideration, but I soon realized I liked it mostly for its color identity and not for its effect.

In fact, Sultai is a pretty perfect combination for this style of deck, as it puts together the Dimir colors of Zombies and the green of many Birthing Pod-like effects.

Nonetheless, I soon figured out that not many Zombies take advantage of the incredibly powerful textbox Yarok counts on. My search continued, keeping black and green as the cornerstone colors for my build.

At last, I landed on Myrkul, Lord of Bones, which may sound as a weird fit at first, but soon caught my attention. There are a lot of Zombies with static or activated abilities and we'll be more than happy to have them stick around even after their death.

Taking into consideration that we're also proactively sacrificing said creatures to cheat into play bigger ones, this commander really was a match made in heaven. I don't particularly like giving up on blue cards, but this general has what it takes to present a new take on Zombies.

Stage One: The Deck

Part One: Brainsss

The deck contains a grand total of 40 Zombie creatures, distributed according to the graph. We want a not-too-high number of 1-cost creatures, as they usually aren't very impactful but are needed to get our engine started.

Keeping in mind that we wan't to re-use them as enchantments, cards like Cryptbreaker and Fan Bearer can do some work. Carrion Feeder and its free sacrificing ability can result extremely useful in later stages of the game as well.

Mana value 2 gives us some solid options, like Zul Ashur, Lich Lord, but it's mana value 3 where things get really interesting. It is the mana cost with the highest number of entries for one specific reason: Lord effects. We can count on 5 creatures that grant Zombies additional abilities, being them stats, abilities or keywords.

Just as an example, Lord of the Accursed fits especially well in this deck, as its activated ability will later be stapled on an enchantment. Alongside these effects, we have cards like Diregraf Colossus or Headless Rider, which will keep on spawning additional creatures for our army.

Mana value 4 and 5 create a sort of plateau, both with 8 entries and a lot of good creatures. Draugr Necromancer is the reason why we play snow lands in our mana base, as its effect is pretty powerful even if it isn't on a creature.

Undead Warchief is the ultimate lord effect, granting stats and a mana discount. God-Eternal Bontu can swing the momentum of the game in our favor out of nowhere. Just drop it on a board full of Zombies, transform them all into enchantments and draw a ton of cards.

There is a steep drop in the final part of the graph, with mana value 6 only having two cards and mana value 7 just one. There are two reasons behind this abrupt change.

First, a strategic one, as we are extremely less likely to evolve our creatures up to these high mana values. We much rather want to make sure we are always hitting our 3 and 4-drops instead of making our curve top-heavy.

Then, there's a much simpler reason: there aren't that many good Zombies with a higher mana value. Combining these two factors, I opted for a build centered around cheaper and impactful creature, steering away from splashy bigger ones.

We still included some powerful cards in this mana value range, such as Calculating Lich to constantly put our opponents under pressure, Geth, Lord of the Vault to steal values from them and Rot Hulk to reanimate those Zombies that couldn't become enchantments when they first died.

Part Two: Podding and Supporting

We have quite a few ways to get the evolution train started. Birthing Pod is an obvious inclusion, but so is Pyre of Heroes.

This variation on the original can only fetch creatures that share a creature type with each other, making it essentially a second copy of the original Pod in our deck.

A third option on this same note is Vivien on the Hunt, which can evolve creatures with her +2 ability.

We can count on some additional ways to cheat creatures into play from our deck. Eldritch Evolution can be a game changer in the right situation, as it can get a big creature from our library out of nowhere.

Pattern of Rebirth can more or less do the same, putting our opponents in tough situations where blocking the enchanted creature means facing whatever will come after it.

Lastly, Hibernation's End is a bit clunky but, as long as we have some mana to sink into it, it will keep on generating value

Considering how the creature and Pod packages take up almost 50% of our deck, we just enough room to squeeze some Zombie support in. Graf Harvest is cheap and effective, giving us a mana sink for longer games and making our creatures harder to block.

Endless Ranks of the Dead is simply an all-star in Zombie decks, as it simply keeps on piling up bodies on bodies. Liliana's Mastery is a tad inefficient, only giving our creatures a generic +1/+1, but the two Zombies it comes with still make it good enough to be played.

Part Three: The Complete Decklist

Stage Two: The Data Room

We're onto the last part of this deck tech: the data room. Was this deck idea actually unique? Let's compare this list against both the average Myrkul, Lord of Bones and the average Zombie deck to see what we gained (and lost) in the process.

Part One: The Average Myrkul Deck

Rather than looking at a specific decklist, there is one macroscopic difference between our list and any other Myrkul list.

Our build is all-in on creatures and Birthing Pod, leaving little to no room for anything else. Nonetheless, using the same general, there are a ton of other possible routes to follow while keeping the same Pod core.

Looking at its EDHREC's page, an obviously common theme is enchantress, with cards like Eidolon of Blossoms, Sanctum Weaver and Sterling Grove all having more than +50% in synergy.

Just as a quick reminder, synergy percentage is the difference between the inclusion rate in a specific deck and the inclusion rate in that color combination. For example, Eidolon of Blossoms is present in 72% of Myrkul decks and has a +58% synergy. This means that it is present in 14% of the Abzan-colored decks, since 58+14=72.

These cards all functions extremely well with this commander, but this is especially true for the first two of them which, being creatures, will later come back as enchantments themselves, producing even more value over time.

Another common theme is token strategies, with cards such as Mondrak, Glory Dominus leading the way. In fact, not only does Myrkul bring back creatures as enchantment, but they're also tokens.

This means that any effect that multiplies them or creates additional copies, for example Second Harvest or any spell that says "populate", is going to give us even more copies of those creatures we wanted back.

Both of these archetypes are perfectly good inclusions and synergise very well with the commander. As I said before, my idea was to go all-in on creatures and evolution lines. Yet, with the right cuts, you can easily slot in additional support cards for these subthemes.

Personally, I would only go for one of them though, either focusing on enchantments or tokens. Given how much space you have to dedicate to creatures in this deck, wanting to play both archetypes would probably lead to a pretty bad representation for both.

Part Two: The Average Zombie Deck

Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver is the most popular Zombie commander, with 19014 decks registered on EDHREC. It's also the second most popular Dimir commander and the 12^th overall.

Considering that with our build we ditched one of the most prominent Zombie colors (blue) in favor of the Pod package, let's see what cards we missed out on in this exchange.

Just by looking at the beginning of its EDHREC page, we immediately notice three cards we couldn't include due to color identity. Diregraf Captain is the definition of a Zombie Lord effect, combining the base stat pumping with a good triggered ability.

Then, we don't get access to two splashy enchantments that can close out games on their own. On one hand, Rooftop Storm, the dream of Zombie players that simply makes our creatures free to cast.

On the other hand, Necroduality, which pairs extremely well with the previous card, and doubles all of our Zombies, giving us an extra copy whenever we play one. All of these cards are pretty good, even though I wouldn't say not having access to them is backbreaking.

The only one I'd really love to include is Rooftop Storm, but we can actually do without the other two with basically no problem at all.

Scrolling further down, we encounter Gisa and Geralf, Gleaming Overseer and The Scarab God. Although very popular, I don't think we are missing out on something here.

The first card comes with a powerful reanimation effect, allowing us to cast one Zombie card per turn from our graveyard. While generally good, considering we want to exile every creature that touches our graveyard, we are more than happy with the accidental recursion we already have.

Then, Gleaming Overseer wouldn't really do much for us, as creature tokens aren't a priority nor a core part of the strategy. Lastly, The Scarab God is undeniably an awesome card, but this is true in whatever shell you play it in.

We could go on and analyze many other cards present on the EDHREC page, but the conclusion would be more or less the same. There aren't actually all that many cards we aren't playing that we wish we could.

Sure, there are some utility pieces and some very good inclusions, but none of them feels pivotal to the point of forcing blue in our color identity.

I also think that's for the best, becuase it means that, as long as you are playing black, you can play a Zombie deck, and you're free to play around as much as you like with the other colors you want to add.

Takeaways From Today's Article

• Myrkul is such a cool and underexplored commander! While it revolves around a central creatures-dying theme, it's possible to build it in several different ways. One could follow the clear enchantment route, building on the green-white Enchantress core.Such a deck would make the most out of its creatures, first using their effect while they're still alive and later recycling them as enchantments (which fit perfectly with the theme of the deck) and still getting access to their triggered and activated abilities.Otherwise, there is a slightly more hidden token strategy within the reach of this commander. Using token multipliers, each creature dying under your control is going to produce several enchantment copies of itself. If you pair this with efficient effects, then the game is getting out of hand pretty quickly.A special mention goes to self-untapping creatures such as Devoted Druid. Once they become enchantments, you're free to tap and untap them as much as you like, netting infinite green mana. While this synergy may lead the deck out of the realm of casual play, it's a pretty neat piece of synergy that some more win-oriented players may want to include in their list.
• Zombies are a very good Birthing Pod strategy. I've wanted to build a deck around this card for a very long time, but I couldn't seem to find a fitting kindred strategy for it to be played. At last, I've found a creature type that actively wants to put cards into the graveyard, that can count on very good cards at 3, 4 and 5 mana (making the evolution package worth playing) and that can function even in those games in which you don't see any of the "evolution" cards.I still think you kind of need to go all-in on this strategy to make it work, thus including 40+ creatures in your deck, and this can be a bit detrimental to other aspects of the deck. In this list, we aren't running any kind of interaction or protection, and we're extremely limited on non-creature kindred synergies.
• Zombies don't need blue cards as much as I thought. I admit I was somewhat sceptical on this deck idea because I really wanted to include blue in the commander's color identity. When I saw Myrkul, Lord of Bones, I couldn't deny how good of a Birthing Pod commander it is.At the same time, a part of me still didn't believe it was optimal because I would miss out on so many staple Zombie cards. Nonetheless, once I've looked at the most popular Dimir zombie decks, I saw that the blue cards they were running weren't better than the non-blue ones I had access to.Sure, Rooftop Storm cannot be replaced by any other card, but anthem effects such as Diregraf Captain are everywhere on black cards too. At the end of the day, while not being that innovative in the creature department, I'm convinced this build gave new air to Zombie decks, opening up to a gameplay stile that could and should be explored more.

That’s all from me for the moment. I hope you enjoyed this deck tech, but now it’s onto you: What do you think of it? Would you have changed anything? Or there’s something you particularly liked? Most importantly, do you believe this was a true innovation? Let me know in the comments below!

Jonathan Zucchetti

Jonathan is an Italy-based Magic enjoyer that has been playing, although with some pauses, ever since Mirrodin released. His passion for EDH bloomed in 2018 and, with it, the love for exotic and underrepresented builds. When he is not complaining about an “unfair” removal, you can find him fiercely defending his Delver of Secrets at a pauper table.