Zombies and Vampires and Milling, Oh My!

Hello everybody! Today is a very exciting day as Innistrad has now been completely spoiled online. You can click here to go to the full visual spoiler (which means I can reference card names without inserting pictures). Now I haven't been able to look at the spoiler list too long, so I don't have a thorough understanding of all the cards and possible interactions between them, so I'm going to put out 3 basic themed decks, and hopefully soon I can start to make some more less obvious decks. So let's start things off with a Zombies deck:

4x Skinrender
4x Cemetery Reaper
3x Gravedigger
4x Diregraf Ghoul
4x Ghoulraiser
1x Grave Titan

4x Liliana of the Veil
4x Ghoulcaller's Chant
4x Altar's Reap
2x Zombie Infestation
4x Smallpox

22x Swamp

This deck is designed to play more like an attrition deck that can randomly have aggressive starts. A turn 1 Diregraf Ghoul is a very fast way to start the game, but you can also grind out games with cards like Liliana and Smallpox and mitigate the negatives from those cards with Ghoulcaller's Chant (can I say real quick that this card is incredible!!), Gravedigger, and Ghoulraiser. Altar's Reap takes those cards that allow you to recurse your creatures and turn it into strict card advantage. Also, there is a miser Grave Titan for those moments when you just have to go over the top.

4x Crossway Vampire
4x Stromkirk Noble
4x Hero of Oxid Ridge
4x Stormblood Berserker
4x Furnace Scamp
4x Goblin Wardriver

4x Koth of the Hammer
2x Traitorous Blood
3x Incinerate
4x Brimstone Volley

23x Mountain

This deck was originally going to be a Vampire deck when I started designing it. I knew there were lots of good vampires in red and I was sure there would be something in black as well. As I was looking into it more though, I realized there wasn't alot of good vampires overall, and there wasn't too much of a reason to go tribal. Sure, theres Bloodline Keeper and Olivia Voldaren, but that's about where it ends. Ultimately I learned 2 things from building this deck: how Vampires needs a lot more to be good (slith isn't too great of an ability IMHO), and this is approximately what I would expect RDW to look like in the coming weeks. One card that I am excited for is Traitorous Blood. Act of Treason with bonus trample is very exciting, and could possibly be the card to push a final attack through.

4x Armored Skaab
2x Skaab Ruinator
4x Mindshrieker
3x Snapcaster Mage
2x Boneyard Wurm
4x Splinterfright
4x Jace's Archivest

4x Visions of Beyond
2x Noxious Revival
4x Forbidden Alchemy
2x Mulch
1x Ancient Grudge

4x Hinterland Harbor
7x Forest
13x Island

This deck was very difficult to put together, and even now I am not too comfortable with how it sits. The ultimate goal of this deck is to make a deck that can crush its opponents under the weight of sheer card advantage. I hear Snapcaster Mage flashing back Ancestral Recall Visions of Beyond is really good! As I started throwing cards on the page with approximate numbers, I wound up with an 80 card deck, so being able to cut down to a clean 60 was quite the task! Overall, I feel this deck is sitting on a lot of potential, but the numbers aren't quite there yet. I wonder if having Skaab Ruinator, Splinterfright, and Snapcaster Mage all together in a deck can even work! They are all based off the graveyard, but they want different resources. casting Skaab Ruinator makes Splinterfright weaker, and to use those aformentioned cards, you have to have a high density of creatures, which makes Snapcaster Mage bad.... There's absolutely a graveyard deck out there, it is just yet to be uncovered!

Hopefully as I become more in touch with Innistrad, I will start to be able to produce more innovative decks that may not be so obvious right off the bat. But until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack