Everyone has been remarking recently on how open the current Standard environment is. Sure, we've got the Big Three in R/G, U/G, and Psychatog... But there are a swarm of lesser-played decks that also seem to have a good shot at making the Top 8. The Standard field is littered with Tier 2 decks like G/W Beats, Astroglide, MBC, Wake, B/G Cemetery, Opposition, and a whole host of other strange ideas posted recently around the web.

I am probably just a sadist who enjoys throwing my opponents for a loop, but somehow even this wide array of decks could not appease me. I had to come up with something different, simply for the purpose of seeing the muddled expressions on the other guy's face when he sees a card like Words of Worship hit the table. So if you still haven't decided what to play for Regionals, and are looking for something effective, yet surprising, I may have a deck for you.

The deck is one that I have been working on with a friend for quite some time. The original idea was for an aggressive mono-black deck very similar to Daniel Garfield's Cabal Cemetery build. However, we soon found that while the deck was often very quick and damaging, it still lost horribly to the suddenly-growing threat of R/G Beats. It also had a very hard time coping with green decks in general after sideboarding. When we realized how much of a problem Compost really was, we almost abandoned the deck... But we realized that this would just leave us bored and force us to play Tog, so we persevered. The answer, we found, lay in splashing white for sideboarded disenchants and life-gain to offset the pain inherent in the deck. The end result turned out to be like some freakish cross between Cabal Cemetery and those horrible Graveborn Identity decks people were raving about right after Legions came out... But it worked.

So without further ado, the list (and please pardon the idiocy of the title, but I was bored):

Spells
2 Chainer's Edict
4 Smother
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Oversold Cemetery
2 Words of Worship
3 Shared Triumph
4 Ensnaring Bridge

Creatures
2 Gempalm Polluter
3 Undead Gladiator
4 Withered Wretch
4 Rotlung Reanimator
3 Graveborn Muse

Land
3 Unholy Grotto
2 City of Brass
4 Tainted Field
1 Plains
13 Swamp

Sideboard:
3 Disenchant
1 Plains
3 Bane of the Living
2 Words of Worship
4 Duress
2 Haunting Echoes

How it Plays
This deck tends to fall into that shifty category known as aggro-control. It can win in two completely different ways, depending on both the matchup and your hand. If you get a creature-heavy hand, you can actually go the aggro route very effectively: Your guys may be small, but they are very efficient. When Withered Wretch hits the table, followed by a Rotlung Reanimator, your opponent is already in for some beats and card disadvantage. Against an Aggro deck, you can often win through beatdown simply by waiting it out, blocking their creatures and recurring your own. The Unholy Grottos are great for bringing back that Rotlung again and again, especially if you happen to draw an extra one later on. In hands where you don't see enough creatures (or where your opponent simply has more beef than you and you can't seem to find a Shared Triumph), you can usually drop an Ensnaring Bridge, empty your hand, and never worry about beatdown again. If they have no answers and you manage to keep out of burn range, you've basically won by this point. Just keep drawing until you get some zombies, a Gempalm Polluter, and a Grotto, and you win.

(Note: For those who haven't picked this up elsewhere, you can activate the Polluter's cycling ability by discarding it, then Grotto it back into your library and draw into it again.)

Just be careful not to get too careless. Make sure you remove Wonders and such, and use your Words of Worship to keep your life total at a comfortable level, because you never know when they will break out a surprise like Deep Analysis or a big burn spell.

Against control, the deck shifts entirely into aggro mode. Here, your important cards are the Rotlungs, Grottos, and Cemeteries. Cabal Therapy and Duress never hurt either, and Haunting Echoes is often a silver bullet. Just keep bringing your stuff back to play, don't worry too much about life totals, and keep up the pressure.

Finally, if you happen to get paired against a deck that runs its own Bridges, try to surprise them. Just build up your"useless" creature force, then cycle the Gempalm at their head a few times and win.

Muses are also great if they happen to hit the table: Control decks tend to fail horribly when it's their opponent who has the card advantage. Also, keep your opponent's win condition in mind; if by some slight chance it happens to involve the graveyard, feel free to take a bite out of their plan with your Withered Wretches.

Combo decks are a mixed bag. The only ones that are likely to be seen in great numbers are Wake, Reanimator, and possibly Opposition - and each matchup is a very different game. Just remember to throw them off as much as possible with Wretches and Bridges, and don't be afraid to sacrifice creatures to flash back a Cabal Therapy.

The Card-by-Card
Chainer's Edict: Though these often get sided out against the creature-heavy decks like R/G, U/G, and G/W, they are never a bad thing. The deck even gets a chance to flash them back surprisingly often. They are also quite important in matchups like MBC and sometimes Reanimator, where there is no other way of taking out a large creature (Guiltfeeder can hurt after a Mutilate).

Smother: An obvious choice. This kills pretty much anything you should ever really need to kill in this format, and it's targeted, and cheap.

Cabal Therapy: I feel that these could easily be switched with the Duresses on the sideboard, but I keep them in the main because very often I want to take out a creature - and just calling"Wild Mongrel" works often enough to irritate any number of opponents. In an emergency, these can also get rid of the Graveborn Muse.

Oversold Cemetery: I will admit that these are somewhat iffy in this relatively creature-light deck, but with the stall ability of the Bridge, this card will often come online later on, and is insane when it does. (Except that despite what he says later on, everyone's gunning for the Bridge these days, and you might wanna think about that when using it as a significant crutch, as it is in this deck - The Ferrett, noting how many times the plan is"Draw a Bridge and pray" in this article)

Words of Worship: The obvious use for this is with the Muse, but it can actually be quite good in a few other cases. Drop one of these early and watch a Tog player slowly begin pull their hair out, or skip your draw for just that one little turn needed to bring you out of burn range against R/G.

Shared Triumph: Another somewhat odd choice, the Triumph is surprisingly useful. Notice that all of your main zombies are 2/2, and the most important creatures you will be facing (Rootwallas, Elephants, and oftentimes Mongrels) are all 3/3. You fare much better in the creature battle with one of these in play.

Ensnaring Bridge: In some ways the core of the deck, the Bridge is what allows your relatively slow win to be successful - and, frankly, dropping one of these on an empty hand is basically game pre-sideboard. Also, with the increasing use of Ray of Revelation over Naturalize, the Bridge is proving difficult to remove for an ever-growing number of decks.

Gempalm Polluter: This one is obvious. Mill for land, speed up beatdown, or recur for the win after Bridge lock.

Undead Gladiator: It mills, it comes back, and it trades with 3/3s. What more do you want?

Withered Wretch: Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that this innocuous little 2/2 is the likely the most powerful card to come out of Legions. It protects you from Echoes, depletes Circular Logic's power, makes Call of the Herd and Firebolt that much less effective, weakens Tog's win, and throws so many wrenches into the Quiet Speculation plan that it becomes almost useless. On top of that, it's a zombie and a cleric.

Rotlung Reanimator: Yet another card that doesn't stay dead. This card will do everything from simply giving you favorable trades to making mass-removal nearly useless. Get multiples out, throw in a Shared Triumph, and watch your opponent squirm.

Graveborn Muse: Much disliked though it may by others who have attempted a zombie deck, the Muse is very powerful. It's a Phyrexian Arena on steroids, and a 3/3 stick. Even if it just gets removed, it probably managed to use up a three-point burn spell, and you can always recur it.

Unholy Grotto: If you've drawn it once, you can fetch it again. This gets especially annoying with Rotlungs, and can give Tog fits after it has killed your Wretch four times already.

The Sideboard
Disenchant: Your run-of-the-mill answer card. Kills Compost or any other irritating thorns in your side.

Plains: Brought in against fast beats to make emptying your hand that much easier.

Bane of the Living: This could possibly go out - or, as is more likely, will get cut to two - but it's still a great card. This is your answer to the creature swarms put out by G/W and R/G while you hide behind your Bridge.

Duress: Why play black without it? It preemptively counters pretty much any problem card, all for the low cost of one black mana.

Haunting Echoes: This little silver bullet scares everything from Tog to U/G to Slide to MBC, while hating out any number of rogue decks in between.

The Matchups
Results are posted in the order Zombies-Opponent/Sideboarded Zombies-SB Opponent

R/G Beats (Kai Build): 13-7/9-21
Game 1 tends to go about 60-40 in your favor. The lock is fairly easy to get down and keep down, and often you will actually just overrun them with recurred, pumped-up zombies.

Games 2 and 3 are, unfortunately, much nastier. These go about 30-70 in favor of R/G, assuming they are running three or four each of Compost and Naturalize on the board. If they run less (as a number of European decks have been doing), the matchup improves greatly. The problem here is that your Bridges are no longer a sure thing, and R/G can often just build up some beats, take out the Bridge at a bad moment, and swing in. It also never helps when they draw one or two more Composts than you draw Disenchants.

U/G Madness: 12-8/16-14
Game 1 is again about 60-40 in your favor. Your problems here can include an inability to empty your hand fast enough, a countered Bridge and the small (but real) threat of suddenly being Deep Analyzed out of safety range.

Game 2 is roughly even, though you have perhaps a slight advantage. Your Wretches are still a threat, and Haunting Echoes is always a possible win, but the problems of Compost and shaky Bridges remain the same as in R/G. In addition, watch out for the newly-resurfacing Ground Seal, which throws off both your recursion and your Wretch.

Psychatog: 15-5/22-8
Your advantage here comes from the fact that your deck has pretty much every thing a control deck hates. With the right hand, you can get some speedy beats out - but usually, you don't even need this. You have hand disruption, Card advantage from the Muses and Rotlungs, the Wretch, which can ruin Tog's day all by itself - and Words of Worship, which probably pisses off a Tog opponent more than any other card out there. Just sit back and gain thirty life, and you win. Nothing like taking a crap rare and completely ruining a Tier 1 deck with it.

Post-sideboard, the only real threat they can bring in is Engineered Plague. Four of the games I lost to Tog were due to Tog simply getting out a double-Plague and preventing you from playing any creatures... Though it's worth mentioning that you still have a decent chance of just decking them if you have an active Words in play. Overall, though, the Plagues aren't nearly as much a boost to them as your board is to you. Four Duresses come in to complement the Cabal Therapies you already have, as do two more Words and two Haunting Echoes... Plenty of hate to ruin Tog's day.

Unfortunately, I haven't had as much opportunity to test against the Tier 2 decks. Feel free to work your own numbers, but here is my general sense of things:

G/W Beats: This should be fairly easy, as they are not particularly fast, and Bridge shuts them down in a hurry. Post-sideboard, though, they have a lot of hate for you. Beware the usual Naturalizes and Composts, as well as any random White hate they might have.

G/W/r Beasts: This is quite a bit harder than the standard G/W Beats deck. Contested Cliffs is a pain in the ass, and actually part of the reason the Shared Triumphs got added in the first place. They will also often have a Wish board with something like a Nullmage Advocate on it, so keep a Smother handy if you can. Beyond that, though, the Bridge locks them out just like it does everyone else.

MBC: This is sort of a weird matchup. How it goes is very dependent on the build of MBC, particularly what their specific win conditions are. Here, if you can drop a bridge and a Words, you can often make the game unwinnable by gaining out of the range of their 2 or 3 Corrupts. Guiltfeeder can be a problem if they manage to clear your board, and even Caustic Tar can be irritating if no Words is in sight. Also, beware of Haunting Echoes: It can hurt you just as badly as it hurts them, so consider turning that Wretch on yourself once in a while.

Opposition: In general, your hand disruption and Disenchants (after sideboarding) should pull you through here. Frankly, the Opposition builds I've seen so far are just not strong enough to be a real threat. In general, their lock simply is not good enough or fast enough to prevent you from winning through with massed zombies.

Sligh: An easy match. Sligh isn't that fast in this format, and what little speed it gets from the Goblin Piledrivers is easily counteracted by an early Cabal Therapy or a Smother when the pesky Goblin attacks. The only other concern is the Grim Lavamancer, but you can weaken him with the Wretch, and Smother him later on. Beyond the Lavamancer, Sligh just doesn't pack enough burn to pose a threat post-Bridge. Games 2 and 3 are a bit harder, as Pillage can take out your Bridge and extra burn may come in, but you can bring in Bane of the Living to wipe out all their weenies. You can lay it down and flip it with an X of 1 to kill almost everything they've got - all for just six mana!

Wake: This match is really just a race. Attack them with zombies, cycle Polluters at them and generally ignore your life total. I'm not sure on the exact ratio here, but I think Wake has the advantage overall. Your beatdown really just isn't fast enough to kill them before they do something ridiculous like gain twenty life off a Miraried Gerrard's Wisdom. This is probably a bad matchup, but not something to worry about greatly considering the lack of Wake decks in the current environment.

AstroGlide: This is a pretty bad matchup game 1. Almost all of your creatures conveniently have two toughness or less, making them easy prey for Lightning Rift. If you get out a Shared Triumph or two, your beatdown abilities improve greatly, as suddenly your creatures just don't die very easily. Your deck also has the nice advantage of being able to lock out their Exalted Angel, but with so many versions of Astral Slide-based decks (no Wishes, Living Wish, Burning Wish) it's hard to predict just how often your Bridge will survive. Either way, if you fail to kill them with early beatdown you are in trouble. They can Slide out Teroh's Faithful to bring them out of kill range, and then begin cycling away with multiple Lightning Rifts, probably doing enough damage to overwhelm the life gain from your Words of Worship, unless they somehow manage to deck themselves first.

Games 2 and 3 are much improved. Disenchants kill Rifts and Astral Slides, Duress kills them before they even hit play, and Haunting Echoes is game over. Overall, you should have the advantage simply because of the hate you bring in from the board.

That's pretty much it for Zombies. I'm not going to make any foolish promises that this is a miracle deck that will nab you an instant Top 8, but I am certain that, somewhere out there, there is someone who can win with it. Good luck to all of you zombie users, and, with some luck, I'll see this deck posted in the StarCityGames.com tournament reports real soon.

Note: My friend Shlomi Mir deserves as much of the credit for the above deck as I do, and perhaps more for coming up with the original concept (before it was ever published on StarCityGames.com, I might add).