Zombie fans are going to be very happy with Tactical Evolution.

The legions of the undead really haven’t been doing much lately. Aside from Anthony Alvarado’s Top 8 showing at Shonen Jump Championship Hamilton almost a year ago with a lightly-splashed Zombie Chaos build, I can’t honestly remember the last time they placed well in a high-level tournament. Vampire Lord packed up and flew to Cabo for an extended vacation when Cyber Dragon hit the game, and things have just gone downhill from there. Until now.

Tactical Evolution gives Zombies two incredibly powerful new monsters, both of which are easy to use. Today, we’ll look at the first of the pair, Zombie Master. Check him out!

Zombie Master         Zombie/Effect          DARK  - Level 4       1800 ATK / 0 DEF     

The most important thing about this card may be its level. Zombies have a vast array of spectacular monsters at their command: Patrician of Darkness, Ryu Kokki, Vampire Lord, and several others. But most of them require a tribute or Pyramid Turtle to enter play. That means they’re great when they’re being special summoned, but usually pretty poor when they’re in your hand. The result is a slow deck that winds up using only one copy of Book of Life simply because it’s so hard to get good monsters to recur from the graveyard early on. That wastes the potential of an entire archetype.

What Zombies need is a really awesome monster that they can normal summon. That would give them more early-game plays and make it easier to run multiple copies of Book of Life, since Zombies would be hitting the graveyard earlier on. Plus, the additional copies of Book of Life would add late-game power, making the entire archetype really strong. Fortunately, Zombies now have that one monster they’ve always needed.

You’ll want to run three copies of Zombie Master—there’s no reason not to. More Zombies in your deck means more hits for Book of Life and the Master himself, so it’s best to run three. Play his cost right and you can use it to load your graveyard with a level 5 or higher Zombie, or to dump something level 4 or lower and special summon it with the effect you’re paying for. The first use is really cool because it gives you something to do with those big tribute Zombies that you don’t really want to draw. Just trade them for a special summon of something smaller, and then bring them back from the graveyard later with an effect. The second use for the Master’s effect is great because it’s so fast! You can summon Zombie Master, discard Spirit Reaper or Pyramid Turtle, and immediately special summon that monster for basically no cost.

You can even discard one Zombie Master to another in order to special summon a second one. Then you can discard something else to the second Zombie Master and special summon it, too! You do that without losing any card presence, since the cards going to the graveyard are the ones you’re special summoning. The ability for this little fellow to create swarms of attackers is absolutely incredible, and his own ATK is pretty great.

At 1800 ATK, Zombie Master is nothing to sneeze at. It can take down anything short of a Monarch, Jinzo, Gravekeeper’s Spy, or Cyber Dragon, and a direct attack will shave off almost a fourth off your opponent’s starting life points. It’s not that you can normal summon Zombie Master in the early game—it’s that his size alone makes it so that you’d actually want to for more than just long-term strategic reasons. When you start going nuts with multiple copies of Zombie Master and throw in a Pyramid Turtle, games end really quickly.

Pyramid Turtle warrants some discussion. The ability to summon Zombie Master, discard Turtle, and then send it into something big enough to destroy it so that you can special summon Ryu Kokki with its effect is great. You wind up with 4200 ATK on the table between Kokki and Zombie Master, and odds are good that your opponent will lose a monster and take damage. But where things get really cheeky is the turn after. Sure, your opponent might mount a comeback and take down Ryu Kokki, or maybe make the smart play and go after Zombie Master. Either way, if you run two more copies of Zombie Master and two or three copies of Book of Life, then you have a great chance of playing Zombie Master again on the next turn. Then you bring back the same Pyramid Turtle that you used on the last turn, and the whole cycle starts again, but with an additional monster under your control. Or two, if you recurred your Zombie Master with Book of Life or if your opponent flat-out couldn’t destroy it, then you get another free beatstick like Ryu Kokki and swing even harder. Zombies decks frequently run out of steam when they go through all their Pyramid Turtle cards, but with Zombie Master on board, this deck never has to worry about that scenario because it will always have access to used copies of low-level monsters.

And that includes Spirit Reaper, as previously noted. While the average Zombie deck nowadays gets only two uses tops out of Reaper (one from a normal summon and another from its lone Book of Moon), a Zombie player running cards from Tactical Evolution could feasibly summon Spirit Reaper five or six times. That’s ridiculous. Remember how good Spirit Reaper was back when we could run three? Okay, now imagine that, but add more copies. If Zombie decks want to control the opponent’s hand, they can now do so thanks to Zombie Master’s strategic impact.

Heck, you can even take your opponent’s Spirit Reaper! Zombie Master isn’t above pillaging the opponent’s graveyard instead of yours, and while a mirror match might be a little farfetched at the moment, plenty of duelists include Reaper in every deck they make. Why bother using your own Reaper with Zombie Master when you could save yours for Book of Life? A little grave robbing can hinder the opponent’s ability to play Pot of Avarice, and if you ask me, you get style points for hitting someone with his or her own Reaper. Snatch Steal and Brain Control just don’t let you do that.

Zombie Master gives Zombie decks speed, another venerable attacker, and an explosive early game that lets them compete with popular decks. It also gives them three more easy-to-summon Zombies that are worth playing, thus helping Zombie enthusiasts remain dedicated to their theme and making it easier to run Zombie-specific cards. I’d say that it just doesn’t get any better than that, but as good as Zombie Master is, there’s another Zombie in Tactical Evolution that’s even better. Each fills a different role, but together, they’re an amazing team that could launch Zombies to the forefront of competitive dueling. I’ll introduce you to that card one week from today.

But for now, get ready for a double-header preview from Matt Murphy tomorrow! Zombies aren’t the only monster type getting a boost from Tactical Evolution: Reptiles are getting a huge push too. Tomorrow, Matt’s going to show you a game-winning combo that unleashes one of the most powerful Reptiles ever printed!