We’re back with a new edition of Combination Attack! I was more than a little reluctant to make decks for the past few weeks after the rotation of the Advanced Format list, but now that it’s gone, I have nothing more to fear: these decks will be legal in their entirety for Advanced play as soon as this article goes live!*

Other people may debate about how Gadgets got “nerfed” (weakened) by the change in formats, or about how they are a lot more powerful now that they can use a second copy of Pot of Avarice, thus creating more redundancy and continuation of a Gadget chain. Heck, some may even focus on how the extra copy of both Jinzo and D. D. Assailant will strengthen current beatdown strategies, or how the restriction of Royal Decree is an interesting balance to the un-restriction of Jinzo. Many new things happened with the new list. But luckily, we’re staying far away from such idle chitchat because none of those conversations have anything to do with the living dead.

Perhaps I’m not the only one who’s gone crazy for Zombies since Tactical Evolution. Jason Grabher-Meyer, the amazing Canadian that he is, revealed with clever linguistics and rhetoric the powers of Il Blud, my favorite from a set filled with favorites. I want to pair him with something incredibly destructive and clever so that my readers will have new ways of humiliating their opponents. The only trouble is deciding how best to use Il Blud to embarrass others. In this scenario, we’ll use our brainsssss . . . not to make Zombie-related puns, but to figure out how to win interestingly. I chose Zombies with burn, and you’ll see how it works out.

The base Zombies list looks something like this:

3 Pyramid Turtle

3 Zombie Master

3 Il Blud

1 Spirit Reaper

Zombie Master does many interesting things for us, but this deck often hinges on us being able to get Zombies into the graveyard so that we can then bring them back to life (or undeath . . . whichever makes more sense). Master and Il Blud play vital roles as repetitive special summoning mechanisms. Morphing Jar will play a strong role in two regards: first, it will allow us to draw more cards when our hand depletes from Zombie Master. It will also discard a hand full of Zombies that can then be revived through a number of tools, allowing it not only to sustain the deck, but also to set up the engine. The umbra-dweller will play equal parts awesome, incredible, and amazing.

This next card needs no additional comment, but I’ll provide some anyway. Lich Lord, King of the Underworld, an overlooked secret rare from Force of the Breaker, works wonders with Il Blud and Zombie Master. While he is restricted to normal summoning, he can be chumped onto the field by Pyramid Turtle or brought back by Book of Life. And when he’s tributed by a card effect and sent to the graveyard, you can put him right back into your hand. Though he won’t work with cards like Mass Driver and Monster Gate (almost thankfully—it would be ridiculous otherwise), he does work quite well with Ectoplasmer.

Ectoplasmer has a lot of synergy with Lich Lord, Il Blud, Zombie Master, and Book of Life. This is, without a doubt, one of the weirder ways to finish your opponent off. You take an unstoppable army of unkillable creatures and use them to go “pew pew” and tick your opponent’s life points down to 0. The symmetrical nature of the effect also keeps your opponent’s field clear for your guys to attack. Malice Doll of Demise can go watch a puppet show: these Zombies each sport more than 1800 ATK, and as such, they are a lot tougher to take out.

We could use some deck thinning beyond the Pyramid Turtle and Morphing Jar duo, so I added Thunder Dragon to help play with Zombie Master. As mentioned many weeks ago, Volcanic Bullet has a similar role, so feel free to add it to your own builds.

I fleshed the deck out a bit with some more support, though I still feel it lacks an answer to continuous spells or traps (although I always was a little paranoid). I left the build at 41 cards, and if you want to push it to 40, either the Soul-Absorbing Bone Tower or the Des Lacooda stick out like a sore thumb. (But they’re much more fun . . . try them, they really are amazingly entertaining in this deck.)

“Pew Pew” Zombies – 41 cards

Monsters: 20

1 Soul-Absorbing Bone Tower

3 Pyramid Turtle

3 Zombie Master

3 Il Blud

2 Lich Lord, King of the Underworld

1 Mobius the Frost Monarch

1 Sangan

1 Spirit Reaper

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Morphing Jar

3 Thunder Dragon

Spells: 16

1 Card Destruction

3 Book of Life

2 Pot of Avarice

3 Ectoplasmer

2 Nobleman of Crossout

1 Brain Control

1 Lightning Vortex

1 Premature Burial

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

Traps: 5

1 Mirror Force

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Dust Tornado

1 Bottomless Trap Hole

The high tribute content of the deck merited a copy of Brain Control, and Lightning Vortex can occasionally clear the way for that last super push. Dust Tornado is part of this paranoia I have about nearly every deck I make (Macro Cosmos is not friendly to most of them). You may want to up the number of defensive traps if you feel that this deck should play a little more reactively until it establishes a good amount of cards in hand and on the board. As previously noted, just use your bbrrraaaaaaaaiiinnsssssssssss . . .

As a note to end on, I now have an email address dedicated to this column that I will check at least once a week. Feel free to send feedback, suggestions, or comments on any article or deck to CombinationAttack@gmail.com. I would love to hear stories from people who played any of my decks at tournaments!

Until next time, duelists!

—Matt Murphy

*Now that you’ve seen the deck, I should add a caveat that anything this fun might not actually be legal at all.