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Zombies Rise From The Dead!
Zach Buckley
6/15/2012 10:10:00 AM 
People love Zombies. People love the Zombie apocalypse. Now, people will love YOUR Zombie apocalypse! That's right, TCGplayers: today we're going to talk about Zombies. And trust me - they're a no-brainer!Now, Zombies have had a somewhat hit-and-miss history in the past. Over the years, it was pretty common to see the deck score a couple of high profile victories, only to fall of the map for a while before rising from the dead months later to take another one-off win. Recently, the Zombie archetype has received a couple of unique cards in the way of Xyz support. Those cards give the deck the kind of boost that may help it achieve not only another showing at a high profile event - but possibly renewed popularity amongst players in general. So without further ado, here's the deck:
Today's Article is Brought to You by the Rank 4! Four is the magic number when it comes to Zombies. All of your best Zombie-types are Level 4's - Zombie Master, Mezuki, Goblin Zombie, and Pyramid Turtle - and the newest addition to this undead horde, Blue-Blooded Oni, is exactly what this deck needs to come back to life. This little bat-Zombie-thing is an amazingly well designed card for both this archetype, and for the current shape of the game. For those of you who don't know, by detaching an Xyz material from a face up Xyz monster you control, Blue-Blooded Oni allows you to special summon a Level 4 Zombie-type monster from the graveyard. Now, a lot of duelists would probably be hesitant at first to waste a valuable Xyz material just for a special summon. But luckily, we now have an Xyz that has no need for its materials! With the release of Battle Pack: Epic Dawn duelists have been given a deceptively wonderful Xyz by the name of Gem-Knight Pearl. He's a 2600 ATK beater that requires two Level 4's and has absolutely no effect. On his own, Pearl is actually a fantastic card. 2600 is somewhat of a magic number at the moment; he'll swing over your opponent's Utopia, Laggia, Dolkka, Lightpulsar, and Dark Flare. The only popular monsters that Pearl can't dominate at the moment are Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon, and Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning. For our purposes, though, Pearl gets an extra boost of awesome because we can abuse him to no end with Blue-Blooded Oni. Those two monsters, coupled with the other key Zombie cards, make the core purpose of this deck possible - which is to Overwhelm your opponent with a huge field of Rank 4's. Let's break down the deck and take a look at some of the key players: The Three S's of the Zombies Engine: Search, Summon, Swarm! The purpose of the Zombie engine in this deck can be easily summed up in three words: Search, Summon, and Swarm. You could even add a fourth 'S' for “success” if you're feeling confident. As I noted earlier, the purpose of this deck is to spam out Rank 4 Xyz summons, so this deck puts a lot of emphasis on your Level 4 monsters - especially your Level 4 Zombies. Goblin Zombie and Pyramid Turtle are your searchers, allowing you easy access to your other key Zombies - namely Zombie Master and Blue-Blooded Oni. We already talked about Blue-Blooded Oni, so let's take some time to focus on Zombie Master. This 1800 ATK beater is one of your key players and, coupled with Oni, is responsible for most of your swarming. By discarding a monster for the Master's effect, you can special summon a Level 4 or lower Zombie-type from the graveyard. That allows you to grab Goblin Zombie, Pyramid Turtle, Mezuki, or Blue-Blooded Oni. When you have Zombie World out, you can also grab anything else - but we'll get to that later. So, once you use Zombie Master's effect you can grab one of your Zombies and... then what? Even if you summon another Level 4 and make a rank 4, that's all you'll have. Granted, sometimes that may be all you want to do; make Number 39: Utopia or Maestroke the Symphony Djinn and that's Fine, and often times Appropriate, but we can do a lot more with the help of one little card that we put at the beginning of the process - Summoner Monk! I've always been a huge fan of Summoner Monk, and he does his job so well here. By ditching a spell card you can summon a Level 4 from your deck - that's huge. Use the Monk's effect to bring out Zombie Master, and if you have Blue-Blooded Oni either in the graveyard or your hand, you can really explode. If you summon Oni with Zombie Master, then overlay Zombie Master and Summoner Monk into Gem-Knight Pearl, activate Blue-Blooded Oni's effect to detach a material from Pearl: choose either Summoner Monk or Zombie Master, depending on what's in your hand. Then special summon either the monster you detached, or another Blue-Blooded Oni, and repeat the process. You can see where this is going: if your opponent hasn't had the means to stop you by now, then they probably can't. It's really easy to set up an OTK this way. With Zombies, you can't be afraid to pitch your hand to make big pushes. It can be a scary loss in card advantage - but more often than not you make it up elsewhere in the terms of crazy card presence. It's important to view your graveyard as your second hand in this deck. Zombies are built to be loaded into the dirt, just waiting to be summoned.
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Not Quite Dead Yet This deck has alot of monsters (besides Summoner Monk) that aren't Zombies; it runs each for a valuable purpose. Deep Sea Diva makes her appearance here as a line of defense thanks to Gachi Gachi Gantetsu, as well as Brionac access when partnered with Zombie Master. I chose to run only two copies of Diva simply because I can't run four. She's got great utility on her own, but if I were to run three copies I would need to find another monster that works well with Diva at the expense of the other cards I need to run, or risk suffering a dead draw when I topdeck that third Diva after using the other two. Those possibilities do not excite me in the slightest. I'm also running a playset of Tour Guide From the Underworld with Sangan for two huge reasons. The primary one being that Tour Guide is, well... Tour Guide. People have spoken volumes about this card and I doubt I need to tell you what it does on its own. But what it does for this deck, is add consistency as well as defense to an archetype that doesn't always keep its guard up. Hell, if you were part of an undead horde, would you? Nope. Well, that's exactly what Ms. Tour Guide is here to do. She's got your back. Go into Zenmaines or Acid Golem and lord over your opponent's field. The second reason is that thanks to her reprint, Tour Guide has become accessible to the masses - which I value alot. If you can make a great main deck that won't cost you an arm and a leg, then that's worth something. Thunder King Rai-Oh makes an appearance here because he's a great Level 4 that can put a lot of pressure on your opponent, and more often than not, force them to commit valuable resources to getting him off of the field. Effect Veiler has truly become a staple, so I feel that her appearance amongst the undead is pretty understandable. Now for the spells! Zombie World... Hates... Everyone! There seems to be a general consensus in the dueling community that the decks to beat at the moment are Dino Rabbit and Chaos Dragons, both of which are deeply inconvenienced by Zombie World. If you can commit this sucker to the field and keep it there, then your opponent is going to waste a lot of time and cards getting rid of this pesky field spell. Both the Evolzars and big Chaos Dragons are very reliant on the type of monsters that they use; Zombie World changes the type of every monster on the field and in the graveyard to... Can you guess it?... Zombies! Huzzah! To break it down, that means you can't overlay into the Evolzars because those dinosaurs you summoned from the deck are instantly zombified as soon as they hit the field. Chaos Dragon decks have to rework the entire way they play while Zombie World is on the table. For them, Zombie World means your opponent can't summon Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon without a full tribute; they can't retrieve a dragon from the graveyard when Light Pulsar Dragon goes down; and they can't special summon a yarded dragon when Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon actually finds a way to hit play - though they can still drop one from the hand. Zombie World has other applications too, when coupled with some other cards we're playing. Zombie Master allows you to nab any Level 4 or lower Zombie-type from either player's graveyard, and with Zombie World out, it makes any and every Level 4 sitting in the yard fair game. Take your opponent's Inzektor Hopper or Inzektor Hornet and stop them from being able to blow up your field, or take their Eclipse Wyvern before they get the chance to banish it. Blue-Blooded Oni allows for the same kind of summoning, albeit limited only to Level 4s in your graveyard. As for the other spells we're running, you see a lot of the usual suspects making their rounds; Heavy Storm, Dark Hole, Monster Reborn, and Mind Control. Also stopping by to hang out is Book of Life, a fantastic piece of Zombies support that doesn't have any negative drawbacks - assuming your opponent has monsters in the graveyard for you to banish. Traps? Where We're Going... We Don't Need Traps In most current metagames you'll find that most decks will run either heavy back row support, or little to none. Many of the decks that choose to run minimal trap lineups (such as Chaos Dragons) tend to forego spell and trap destruction as well, in favor of sheer offensive might; regardless of the possible repercussions. Unlike those decks, Zombies need to be able to defend against vicious back rows due to the simple fact that you can't always recover from Bottomless Trap Hole in the same way that say, Chaos Dragons can - which is why I chose to run good ol' Royal Decree. It's one of those cards that you love if you've got it on your side but hate to see played against you. In Conclusion With the upcoming release of Gold Series: Haunted Mine, many of the Zombie cards in this deck are getting reprinted. It's the perfect time to give a deck like this a spin. Maybe you already have? Maybe you've got a variation you're fond of? Leave a comment below and share your Zombie survival stories! -Zach Buckley 
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this card!