Black/Red Zombies (Super Fast Aggro Deck)

October 15, 2012 | Posted by Dee

If you like fast aggro decks, I definitely recommend Joe Bernal’s Black/Red (BR) Zombies deck. Two weekends ago, he got fourth place with the deck in a big Starcitygames Standard tournament in Cincinnati.

For the Zombie tribe, the color combination of green/black has gotten most of the hype because of the strong green/black Zombies from Return to Ravnica. However, if your local metagame is not prepared to deal with a flurry of burn spells, going with red/black might be a better deck choice.

Without green, you lose Lotleth Troll and Dreg Mangler but red gives you access to powerful burn spells and Falkenrath Aristocrat. These cards make Red/Black Zombies faster than the Green/Black version.

Check out Joe’s decklist below.

BR Zombies
Creatures (24)
Spells (14)
Lands (22)
Sideboard (15)

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As you can see, the deck is very straightforward. Any time you see 4 Bump in the Night in a Standard deck, you can know that the strategy is to kill your opponent quickly with cheap aggressive creatures and burn spells to the dome.

The deck has a whopping 12 two-power creatures that only cost one mana. This gives you a good chance of playing a fast creature on turn one.

With a little luck, you can even have three two-power guys by turn two. That start is pretty hard to beat.

Blood Artist is the two-drop of choice. It combos well with Falkenrath Aristocrat. It makes your burn spells slightly better whenever you use them to kill a blocker.

Plus, Blood Artist brings down your opponent’s life little by little whenever he blocks to kill your creatures. When his life total is low enough, you can start sending burn spells to his face to win the game.

The biggest reason to play red is definitely Falkenrath Aristocrat. This Vampire is awesome. It matches up well against Thragtusk because it has haste, flying, and four power.

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It interacts very well with Geralf’s Messenger and Gravecrawler because you don’t mind sacrificing them. It’s hard to kill because of its indestructible abililty.

The sideboard is pretty cool because it gives the deck other angles of attack. For example, some decks will sideboard life gain cards like Centaur Healer but you can trump that strategy by cutting 4 Bump in the Night and bringing in 3 Rakdos, Lord of Riots and 1 Mountain.

Against decks that rely on planeswalkers, you have access to 3 Dreadbore. Dreadbore is also good against Loxodon Smiter. That card can be a problem because it’s cheap and can’t be killed by the burn spells.

Tragic Slip is another option against Loxodon Smiter. It’s also a good card versus Arbor Elf, Avacyn’s Pilgrim, Lotleth Troll, and opposing Falkenrath Aristocrats.

Versus other Zombie decks, you can sideboard Pillar of Flame and Sever the Bloodline to deal with Lotleth Troll and opposing Gravecrawlers and Geralf’s Messengers.

If you face a deck with a lot of good defensive cards for the early game, you can bring in 3 Underworld Connections and try to outlast them in the mid and late game.

Filed Under Standard 

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