One of the biggest draws of Premodern is nostalgia. Archetypes like Elves and Goblins are historically well-known in Magic and occasionally appear in competitive formats when there's a sufficiently powerful card pool. However, it's not always possible to build a deck with all the iconic staples—the format solves this by offering the very card pool that originally popularized these strategies.
But tribal decks in the format aren't just about Goblins and Elves: Zombies, while less competitive today, also have a strong creature core and spells that make it a worthy archetype to experiment with in Premodern. This is especially true for fans of this creature type who have been missing a competitive strategy built around them for years!
The Decklist
There are different ways to build Zombies in Premodern, but I believe focusing on a "Mono Black Aggro" variant seems the most effective for today's format: we don't have the same explosive potential as Elves or Goblins to the point of being able to ignore what the opponent is doing, so we need to level the playing field with cheap disruption without sacrificing so much speed and synergy that we become just a worse Mono Black Midrange deck.
Our strategy involves establishing board dominance in the early turns with our one-drops and using Duress and Cabal Therapy — which have great synergy in this archetype — to destabilize the opponent's plan, ensuring constant pressure turn after turn with Withered Wretch and Lord of the Undead.
Maindeck
Carnophage and Sarcomancy are the most powerful one-drops available in black. For one mana, they offer two power, establishing a fast clock, and the life loss is irrelevant in a deck that plans to end the game quickly. Not to mention, both are also good fodder for Cabal Therapy when they're no longer needed.
Festering Goblin can be an early attacker, a blocker that trades with two-toughness creatures, or a surprise removal spell that breaks important synergies in decks like Elves. It's also the best possible sacrifice for Cabal Therapy.
Withered Wretch has an efficient body for its cost and functions as maindeck graveyard hate in a format where many strategies benefit from the graveyard in some way. Plus, having the Cleric subtype matters with Rotlung Reanimator.
Rotlung Reanimator turns every Cleric in our list (and we have a few) into extra value if they're destroyed. It turns bad combat trades into card advantage.
Lord of the Undead offers a permanent pump to all our creatures, plus it recycles any zombie from your graveyard, ensuring we'll always have enough threats on the board, even in grindy games.
Shepherd of Rot is our "Burn" spell and commonly finishes games after our initial beatdown pressure. More copies could be used, since it has synergy with Rotlung Reanimator, but it's not advisable to keep many copies when Sligh is the most popular deck in the format.
Graveborn Muse is our card advantage engine and works better than Phyrexian Arena in this list—at least in games against strategies without many sweepers. Its cost is relatively high, so we play only two copies.
Duress and Cabal Therapy are the most efficient disruption duo in the format. Duress protects your threats from removal and combos in the early turns. Cabal Therapy, with information from Duress or by sacrificing a creature, can completely dismantle the opponent's hand, making it the most synergistic card in our list.
Smother deals with the vast majority of threats in the format for a decent cost and without additional concessions, while Snuff Out is a "free" removal spell that lets you develop your board while answering a threat, allowing us to maintain positive Tempo in the match.
Wasteland is one of the biggest advantages of playing monocolored lists. Denying the opponent's mana at key turns can set them back several turns, giving us time to widen our board position.
Sideboard
Engineered Plague is our ultimate weapon against other tribal decks. Naming Elf, Goblin, or even Human against White Weenie can practically win the game on its own, since our creatures' bodies are naturally larger than the opponent's anyway.
Gloom is a powerful hate card against white decks, punishing sweepers and other spells with high mana value. It's effective against Azorius Control, Orzhov Midrange, Replenish, and Enchantress.
Dystopia is our best tool for dealing with cards that black normally struggles to answer, forcing the sacrifice of green or white enchantments or creatures every turn.
Diabolic Edict is the answer for big, indestructible, or protected creatures that we have trouble dealing with by other means. It also handles Phyrexian Dreadnought, since the archetype doesn't typically use many creatures.
Zombie Master comes in as an additional Lord in mirrors against black decks, where Swampwalk provides a clear path for our creatures to attack.
The additional copies of Smother and Snuff Out ensure we have enough removal against creature-heavy decks or where we need to deal with specific threats without overly taxing our mana.
Sideboard Guide
Mono Blue Stiflenought
IN
OUT
We need removal for Phyrexian Dreadnought at all costs while maintaining a fast clock. Therefore, we add our extra removal and remove Festering Goblin, which is too slow for this matchup.
Sligh
IN
OUT
This is a race, and we already take too much damage from Sarcomancy and Carnophage to want to keep Shepherd of Rot and Snuff Out. Zombie Master might seem like a strange choice, but opponents tend to use burn spells as removal against our creatures, and having a way to regenerate them provides more resilience in the mid-game.
Goblins
IN
OUT
Engineered Plague wins this match, but we can't underestimate an opening with Goblin Lackey into Siege-Gang Commander, so we add more copies of spot removal. Festering Goblin plus Cabal Therapy is one of the best openings we can have, whether on the play or the draw.
Elves
IN
OUT
Plague is even more devastating against Elves, but the opponent's explosive potential is higher due to Gaea's Cradle and Survival of the Fittest. Again, Festering Goblin + Cabal Therapy is our best early-game opening.
Mono Black Midrange
IN
OUT
This is a difficult match, as our opponent can interact very well with our board, especially in post-sideboard games, and has no problem accumulating two Engineered Plagues and practically killing all our creatures.
Replenish
IN
OUT
Dystopia is an excellent card, but our best route in this match is to be as aggressive as possible early on and seek to "lock" the opponent's combo with discard and Gloom. Festering Goblin would be a side-out if we wanted to add more copies of Gloom, but it doesn't generate any negative exchange for us in this match while also representing another two power on the board with Lord of the Undead.
Enchantress
IN
OUT
Unlike Replenish, Enchantress requires more active hate to deal with the Enchantments because, otherwise, the opponent generates mana much faster and can easily "lock" the game if we fail to interact with our discard spells.
Psychatog
IN
OUT
Although Psychatog is more control-oriented, the game plan against it is similar to that against Mono Black Midrange, with the advantage that we need to deal with fewer threats. Remember to use Withered Wretch always with mana available to clean some cards from the graveyard.
Azorius Standstill
IN
OUT
Engineered Plague deals with the tokens from Decree of Justice's cycling, which is often the opponent's primary way to stabilize the game when we remove a sweeper. Our plan isn't much different — we need to maintain pressure — but the opponent's removal and Counterspells tend to keep up with our clock.
Gruul Oath
IN
OUT
As tempting as it might be, including Zombie Master isn't very efficient when the opponent's list tends to easily force us to stay below four lands, even though it's a good answer against Pyroclasm. Festering Goblin does very little to handle the board or act as a threat, so we focus on adding more removal against Terravore and Call of the Herd, while Dystopia handles Oath of Druids.
Wrapping Up
That's all for today!
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!
Thanks for reading!
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