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I thought I was done last time I wrote an article about this deck, but some new developments have come up. First of all, several players took Zombie Bridge type decks to Dutch Nationals. Some of them did okay, but nobody made top 8 in the Constructed portion with one of these decks. Second, since two articles have been recently published that mention me by name, I almost feel obligated to respond. Third, the deck has evolved substantially to the point where I think a few of its major defects have been fixed.

A Realistic Assessment
The decklist I posted in my original article was pretty good. It performed excellently against many decks in the field, but it also had some glaring weaknesses. Also, my goal in writing that article was some Mike Flores-style cheerleading to get some enthusiasm for the deck. All of the test results in that article should pretty much be disregarded for several reasons, including:

• My own inexperience playing the deck
• A lack of decent opponents to test against
• A lack of thorough sideboard testing.

The data in the third article of the series is probably the most accurate - and while the decks in that tournament were unconventional, I don't think anything reported there was false in any way. I'll give the final iteration of the original decklist and say a few words about what it was really like to play with.

Cabal Cemetery
4 Festering Goblin
4 Withered Wretch
2 Shepherd of Rot
4 Rotlung Reanimator
4 Cabal Archon
3 Gempalm Polluter
2 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Oversold Cemetery
3 Mutilate
4 Smother
4 Cabal Therapy
20 Swamp
3 Unholy Grotto

Sideboard:
4 Duress
3 Megrim
2 Haunting Echoes
2 Engineered Plague
2 Rancid Earth
1 Oversold Cemetery
1 Ensnaring Bridge

This is what the list looked like before it was scrapped and rebuilt due to the addition of some much-needed new material. The realistic match pairings against popular decks look something like this:

• Vs. Tog: Pretty good, at least 60/40, maybe more depending on the build
• Vs. MBC: About even, 50/50; if they Haunting Echoes you, it's bad, otherwise you have the advantage with recursion and whatnot
• Vs. U/G: About even, 50/50; Games tend to end once Ensnaring Bridge hits. The trick is staying alive that long
• Vs. R/G: Really, really, really bad. The creatures are easy to deal with, but the burn will get you every time. Games 2 and 3 are impossible since you can't remove Compost and that feeds them more and more burn.
• Vs. Sligh: Pretty good; game 1 might be rough, but games 2 and 3 are better and they don't have green creatures or Composts
• Vs. Wake: I didn't get to test a lot against Wake, but it's a pretty straightforward race - and not a bad match altogether based on the few games I played
• Vs. Reanimator: Pretty good; Bridge can give them fits, the hand disruption hurts them a lot too
• Vs. AstroGlide: Depends entirely on the version. RW without Burning Wish was not a bad match, if they had wishes it was really hard since they could get Morningtide or Pillage or whatever they needed. R/W/g with Living Wish was impossible since they could blow your Cemeteries endlessly with Cloudchaser Eagle
• Vs. Beasts: Pretty good, but the matchup seemed way too luck-based. It was basically a matter of hoping you drew enough Bridges and Mutilates to stay in it. The biggest problem tended to be Living Wish to get something like Cloudchaser Eagle or Nantuko Vigilante

Those pairings aren't terrible - but given the choice, I'd take U/G over this deck any day of the week. Clearly, that meant something needed to be changed. The most pressing thing was the matchup against R/G, the most ubiquitous deck in the environment as of mid-April.

Before I post the new list, I want to go over the fundamental flaws of the deck as listed above:

• It rolls over to R/G. And yowza, that's a bad thing to roll over to. Game 1 wins were pretty high against R/G, near or exceeding 50%, but post-sideboard records were abysmal, down in the 20% range.
• The Compost issue. This is a problem for any deck that uses a lot of black, and it's a real plague for mono-black decks. As much as I want to write to Randy Buehler and beg him for the love of God to stop printing blatant color hosers in the basic set, the fact remains that it exists (at least for this season). Mono black cannot handle it at all, and can easily lose to a turn 2 Compost even if everything else goes right. But the thing I really hated about this card was that the win condition is based on things coming from and going to the graveyard, so this was even a major problem in the late game.
• No tutors, no card drawing. This was The Ferrett's main critique, and it is a very good one. Topdecking mode is not such a bad thing once Ensnaring Bridge is down, but there were too many games that didn't last that long. The other issue was finding a win condition. The army of 2/2 zombies doesn't always cut it, and there were a few too many games where it was taking entirely too long to find a Cemetery, or Archon, or Gempalm.
• It doesn't kill fast enough. This is an issue most closely related to problem #3, since once a kill condition comes up the game ends pretty soon. However, there were times when you would just lose burn races to Slide or R/G, mostly due to them starting the race with a higher life total than you (from R/G's early-game damage and Slide's lifegain).
• A suboptimal sideboard. Okay, Megrim is cool, and it seems like it should rule... But really, it doesn't. We learned that the hard way. The Graveborns are also cool and are really useful when beatdown mode is a desirable thing - the only problem was they aren't all they are cracked up to be. Here's the thing; if you have low life when Tog blows the Upheaval on your ass, you will be squished for sure. Even a defensive Upheaval followed by a Psychatog two turns later (and a removal spell or two to clear the way, of course) would end the game. And all because you were at low life from your own Muse! It just didn't work the way it was supposed to. The low life problem is a major issue against MBC and Slide, too, which use direct damage as a win condition.
• Difficulty getting the Bridge to zero. It's really easy to get the Bridge to one or two, but that won't save you from flying Basking Rootwalla beatdown.

I promise that I'm gonna post the new list, but I have one more thing to say: I need to give a huge shout-out to everyone on the forum who has helped in testing and developing this deck. If you're reading this article, you know who you are - and I thank you.

Maindeck
4 Festering Goblin
4 Withered Wretch
4 Rotlung Reanimator
4 Cabal Archon
2 Bane Of The Living
2 Gempalm Polluter
4 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Grafted Skullcap
3 Oversold Cemetery
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Smother
14 Swamp
4 Tainted Field
1 City Of Brass
1 Secluded Steppe
3 Unholy Grotto

Sideboard:
4 Duress
3 Daru Sanctifier
2 Haunting Echoes
2 Mind Sludge
2 Engineered Plague
2 Free Slots

I'll do an abbreviated card by card analysis since much of what was previously said (in the other articles) still applies.

Festering Goblin - A good card all around. Early beats against control decks, a crucial early blocker against green. It's an amazing combo with Cabal Therapy, and never a dead card thanks to Gempalm Polluter.

Withered Wretch - The other best bear ever printed. This card is so sick, I'd play six if it was legal. The best uses so far are as follows: Eating Tog's graveyard to keep Dr. Teeth on a diet, eating R/G graveyard to keep Mr. Grim [Lavamancer, that is] under control, eating incarnations, eating flashback spells, keeping Circular Logic in check. That's a whole lot of uses. He also owns the Reanimator deck all by himself.

Rotlung Reanimator - The deck's backbone, with huge synergy card and lots of built-in card advantage. This is in some ways like a black Call of the Herd, as it has to be killed twice. The only thing is, it does that for your whole team. I've won entire games with just a pair of these guys and an Unholy Grotto. Once there are two or more on the board, your opponent won't even think of killing one of your clerics. Even with just one out, your blocking efficiency goes way up, a crucial card in holding off early game creature rush.

Cabal Archon - The deck's other backbone, and the primary win condition. Never cast it on turn 3 if you can avoid it. The card is highly efficient if you get to sacrifice it before it dies - but if you don't, then it's just a Grey Ogre. If your opponent has Haunting Echoes, try your hardest to make sure this card is never in your graveyard during your opponent's main phase.

Bane of the Living - One of the new guys; see the section below.

Gempalm Polluter - A secondary win condition, a card advantage engine with Cemetery, uncounterable life loss, and never a dead draw. This is a really good card and would be used in greater numbers if there was room - but unfortunately there isn't, and it can be harder than you think to keep enough zombies in play to make this thing worthwhile. On the other hand, it can do massive damage towards the end of the game, and there's a neat trick with Unholy Grotto also that lets you use it twice in one turn.

Ensnaring Bridge - This has mutated into a full-fledged Bridge deck, and you need all four of these main. Bridge is a killer card against any creature beatdown deck. Naturalize is now waning in popularity, making this card even more effective than normal. It should be noted that this card generates huge amounts of passive card advantage by effectively turning every attack-oriented creature your opponent draws into a dead card.

Grafted Skullcap - One of the new guys; see the section below.

Oversold Cemetery - The final piece of the deck's backbone, this card is a card advantage machine no matter how you look at it. Its important to note though that it is not required to win, the deck has always been able to win without recursion, recursion just makes it faster and easier. With the new additions this card, while still deck backbone, is basically just gravy - tasty gravy that you want with every meal.

Cabal Therapy - Better than Duress in this deck, since you have a high creature count and the amazing combo with Festering Goblin.

Smother - There just wasn't room for the fourth; oh well. These are used mostly as early game disruption and to pick off Grim Lavamancers in the late game.

The land - There's white in the deck now! With Mutilates out of the deck, splashing became a possibility - a critical one, as this gives you your answer to the green menace of Compost. The chance for mana screw has gone up a little bit, but that was inevitable; having a good solution to Compost is so much more important.

SB Duress - This deck can run an awful lot of hand destruction when it wants to. I also sometimes switch these with Therapy one-for-one if my opponent is playing rogue.

SB Daru Sanctifier - One of the new guys; see the section below

SB Haunting Echoes - This is a straight-up power card. It really punishes Tog and Slide, but has some uses against other decks such as Reanimator, red Burning Bridges, and other Cemetery-based decks.

SB Mind Sludge - More hate against Tog and Slide. This could also be Persecute, but I find fourteen swamps is enough to power up Mind Sludge, since it never really has to be higher than four or five. This card is also extremely powerful against Wake and rogue control decks.

SB Engineered Plague - There was some extra room in the board so the old standby of Engineered Plague went in. No need to fear Sligh, Opposition, or elves anymore! (It also hoses soldiers, but I haven't really seen any white weenie around.)

SB 2 free slots - There is a lot of flexibility in what these might be. Some have suggested Nantuko Shade for added beatdown effect. Some have suggested some more white cards, such as Teroh's Faithful. My personal favorite is an additional Oversold Cemetery and Gempalm Polluter just to shore up the basic structure of the deck in those matchups where it is worth shoring, such as against Tog or any other Counterspell-heavy deck. The fourth Oversold is also a good option for game 3, since your opponent is likely to have brought in additional enchantment removal by then.

The New Guys
A few substantial additions have been made to the deck and these have dramatically boosted its performance.

Grafted Skullcap - Wow, this is a good freakin' card. It's been the core of Burning Bridge decks forever, and now it is part of the black Burning Bridges deck as well. Not only is it a massive card drawing engine, but it has substantial ancillary benefits as well. Let me go down the list:

• First off, turn 3 Bridge, turn 4 Skullcap is straight-up game over against a lot of decks... At least in game one, anyway. And it's still really good post-sideboard, since your opponent has to find a Naturalize or Turbulent Dreams or something before they're back in the game - and in the meantime, you are drawing twice as many cards as they are!
• The Skullcap makes your deck go turbo. You do everything at twice the rate you used to. Your mana development goes through the roof since you almost never miss a land drop. Your army gets huge from topdecking so many guys. You even get to use an Unholy Grotto and see a new card that turn, too! Never underestimate the damage potential you can generate with an Archon in play. Its no longer the slow process of recurring the Archon and tossing him at your opponent; now you will keep your Archon in play, recur another guy, and topdeck someone else every few turns. This results in an average of two points of drain per turn, which ends games very very quickly.
• Assists in getting Cemetery online. Sometimes you just won't have a sacrificing mechanism on hand when you need it and just have to discard directly to the yard. This is generally only relevant for ditching spare Festering Goblins, since all your other creatures should either be played if you can (Rotlung, Wretch, Bane) or can send themselves to the yard while providing a benefit (Archon, Gempalm).
• Gets you to your relevant cards faster - twice as fast, to be precise. There are still no tutors in the deck, and for good reason; Diabolic Tutor has severe negative synergy with the rest of the deck.
• Acts as an effective"cap" (forgive the pun) to the mana curve of the deck. Generally, it's best to play the Cap as the last card from your hand so as not to discard anything before you get to start your enhanced draw phases. In the old decklist, Mutilate was the top of the curve, but Mutilate is not a good card to just randomly drop as the last card from your hand. The deck is substantially more aggro with Skullcaps, and it is all due to playing out a more aggressive mana curve while having greater access to resources.
• Lets you attack from behind your own Bridge while still maintaining the lock. Conveniently, you are playing a deck full of two-power creatures. Drawing two cards per turn lets you attack if you want to.
• Is not a black spell! This isn't a real benefit, I suppose, but this card doesn't make your opponent's Composts any better which is always something worth considering when playing a black deck in standard. It's also relevant that playing with a greater number of artifacts (a colorless mana requirement) makes it easier still to splash off color for white.

The only real arguments against Skullcap is that it prevents you from holding Smothers and hand destruction spells until you really need them. Generally, the Caps should come out of the deck if you are bringing in timing-based spells like Haunting Echoes, Mind Sludge, or anything else you don't want to just randomly play off the top of your deck. However, I tend to leave these in against Tog, because the extra cards help a lot and you can just about count on being able to randomly play Mind Sludge or Haunting Echoes off the top of your deck and still achieve good effect against Tog. Tog always has a full hand and graveyard - and if they don't, then you are probably winning handily anyway.

Daru Sanctifier - When the testing results against R/G came back, we just sat there and said,"Damn - we need a recurrable synergistic enchantment removal spell that isn't a dead draw when there are no enchantments out." Now I am sometimes a narrow thinker and was fairly committed to keeping the deck mono black... But that was mainly because I wasn't aware of the power of Skullcap or the existence of Daru Sanctifier. This card is just perfect. It's never dead, not even in total mana screw, since it can be played face-down as a morph for three colorless. For a two-mana flip, it will blast any enchantment you want... And there are a lot of enchantments worth blasting.

Compost is at the top of the list of blastworthy enchantments, but there is also Astral Slide, Lightning Rift, and Mirari's Wake. This isn't terrible against Elephant Guide either, although Bridge tends to be more than enough to handle that. Some U/G decks use Equilibrium, and that's a card that needs to be nailed if it shows its ugly head. This is also a crucial spell against other Cemetery decks.

The synergy on it is outstanding as well. It's a cleric, for crying out loud! It can be sacced for two points of drain and a zombie token, then recurred to kill another enchantment! It also has a 1/4 body, which is good enough to hold off Rootwallas and Aquamoebas.

Bane of the Living - I know what I said in the original article... But this card is too slow to be of much use. That is only true if you are trying to pretend that Bane of the Living is Mutilate. It isn't; it's a different card that accomplishes different goals. It is strictly inferior to Mutilate for creature control purposes, specifically for early-game rush defense; in fact, it is so mana-intensive that I usually play it face up during the early game just to use as a reasonably-sized creature; 4/3 for four is pretty good, and it's nice to not have to double-block Arrogant Wurms to kill them. This also eats Rootwallas, Mongrels (usually, anyway), Aquamoeba, Call of the Herd, all varieties of white and red small things.

Its real value, though, is what it does during the late game. It is a reusable Wrath of God, which is pretty diesel if you ask me. The best use for recurring Wrath is to prevent U/G players from building up a lethal alpha strike for the turn they will topdeck Turbulent Dreams and rush in for the win. Recurring Wrath also keeps Grim Lavamancer in check; you can kill those little wimps on a whim with Bane of the Living. The Bane is also really good against aggro decks that run little in terms of removal; it can be played face-down on turn 3 or later and popped later on to swing the momentum of the game back in your favor. Its definitely burn bait, though, so it's not the best spell against R/G. (Although I really can't complain about an early-game 4/3 that turns into a recurring Wrath, so maybe it isn't so bad against R/G after all.)

The Cuts
Mutilate - This spell cannot be used in the same deck with Grafted Skullcap. The anti-synergy is too great; it's basically just a waste of both spells since you won't want to cast either of them in anticipation of the other. They also compete for the same mana slot.

As it turned out, the Skullcap is a much better choice than Mutilate is. Bane of the Living does some pinch-hitting for Mutilate, but it's really not the same. Altogether I find that surviving early game rushes is pretty easy, Mutilate was never really necessary since you have so many creatures to block with. The real trick was finishing the deal after the opening of the game. Mutilate just doesn't assist toward that end at all; if anything, it counteracts it, since attacking with your creatures is one viable method of dealing twenty points of damage. This is not to say that there wasn't some synergy between Rotlung and Mutilate in the old build, but there wasn't enough synergy to make it really worth it.

And of course, the real reason why Mutilate had to go is that the swamp count has dropped for the color splash. You won't reliably have four swamps on turn 4, anymore which severely marginalizes Mutilate as an efficient removal spell.

Shepherd of Rot - The card I miss most from the old deck. It was fun, a good card, and very strong in some situations - but there were better cards to use than this one, and so it had to go to make room.

SB Megrim - At one point, I thought that this would be enough to shut down Slide; I was wrong. I know that now.

SB Graveborn Muse - I already discussed this card above. I should just mention that I have been thoroughly unimpressed with this card in the current Standard environment. It is just not functional in an environment so full of burn and removal; Skullcap is a far superior way of getting extra cards. Skullcap is synergistic with Bridge (which is an amazingly powerful card right now) whereas Muse has anti-synergy with Bridge.

Conclusion
So the real question is,"Now that the deck has undergone such substantial revision, how does it perform?" Well the answer is,"I'm not positive - but it looks like it has improved substantially." I can say with confidence that my game 1 percentage has risen across the board - even against Tog, where Bridge is a dead card. Bridge is the only dead card in the deck against Tog. The numbers below were generated casually through my daily playtesting, any of the figures given has at least thirty games behind it.

Game 1 percentages vs. the five most popular archetypes

• Vs. R/G - ~70%
• Vs. U/G - ~80%
• Vs. Tog - ~ 60%, possibly lower
• Vs. MBC - ~50%
• Vs. Slide - ~35%, higher if playing against non-Wish version

Game 2 and 3 percentages vs. the five most popular archetypes

• Vs. R/G - ~50%, higher if opponent sideboards incorrectly (by removing burn instead of creatures)
• Vs. U/G - ~70%
• Vs. Tog - ~ 70%
• Vs. MBC - ~60%, lower if they have multiple Engineered Plague
• Vs. Slide - ~40%, higher if they have not boarded in enchantment and artifact kill

These numbers are estimates, of course, as I have not done formal statistical analysis. Most of the other people who've played this deck extensively have reported similar numbers as well.

The game 1 percentages are very high against beatdown, since they typically do not have any answers to Bridge. Against R/G, the post-sideboarded games have improved substantially thanks to Daru Sanctifier and Grafted Skullcap. You now have good answers to Compost and the ability to outrace them in the burn sector.

Post-sideboarded games against U/G are only slightly harder, since generally they will only have a pair of Turbulent Dreams to defeat Bridge with. If they have Naturalize, it is harder. I actually don't always bring in Sanctifiers, since Compost isn't as dangerous in the hands of a U/G player; it still won't do anything about a Bridge. A lot of U/G decks these days aren't even using Compost anymore.

Against Tog, you have four dead cards game 1 and have not brought in your bombs - yet but the matchup is still pretty good. There are a lot of versions of Tog out there, and the game 1 percentage depends heavily on how much creature removal and bounce they use. Generally, the Cunning Wish versions are easier than the extra removal versions.

MBC is always a pitched match; it generally revolves around them getting off an Echoes against you or not. It is still quite possible to win after Echoes, although it is much more difficult. You bring some serious hate with Mind Sludge and Duress after sideboarding, so you can usually just disrupt them out of the game. The creature removal is trivial, since they have no answers to your recursion. The main thing to watch for is, as usual, Corrupt.

Slide is a legitimately difficult matchup, and it's never really favorable. I find that the games always go long and occasionally even come down to decking. They will win handily if they can destroy each Cemetery you put out; if you can keep one active, though, the game will go long. I won't go into the specifics, since this is by far the most difficult and complicated match you have, but you need to keep up a steady stream of Drains to keep life parity. Bridge should hold back Exalted Angel indefinitely while their mass removal prevents you from ever building up a big enough army to win by attacking with.

The Sanctifiers are totally key; you must destroy Lightning Rifts and Astral Slides to have any chance of winning. Like I said, if they destroy all your cemeteries you probably won't win since you need Cemetery to recur Sanctifier. Post-sideboarded games are sometimes won by randomly dropping a Mind Sludge and beating down before they can recover, but Slide tends to topdeck Wrath of God frequently enough so that this strategy is unreliable. Haunting Echoes has the potential to ruin them, but W/R/g versions with Cartographer never run out of cycling.

I have inconclusive data against the other decks in the environment, but I will share my impressions from the few games I have played and I will also try to make some comparisons by analogy.

Wake - Hand destruction and enchantment removal work very well. But this is not a walk in the park match by any means, and is guaranteed to go long.

Reanimator - This is very easy due to Bridges and Withered Wretch. If they fail to remove either of those cards, they simply cannot win the game. You also bring in some real bombs in games 2 and 3 in the form of added hand destruction and Haunting Echoes.

Opposition - I haven't seen much of this deck around lately, and I think I know why: It just sucks in an environment where everyone plays with enchantment removal. (The same criticism might apply to Cabal Cemetery 2.0, but I would point out the fact that it's really pretty easy to win without Cemetery and you still have Grotto for backup anyway). In any case, Engineered Plague on squirrels works very well. Not a terribly hard matchup, since you can bring in recurring enchantment removal and squirrel kill.

White Weenie - It not a good deck in general, and not a good deck against Cabal Cemetery 2.0 either. They probably can't break through the Bridge, and they also probably can't do anything about Bane of the Living recursion. (Morningtide - The Ferrett, pointing out that your Banes better be big and at end of turn) If they use clerics of their own, you get to abuse your Rotlung Reanimator even more than usual.

Red Burning Bridge - Your burn gains you life at the same time; that alone should throw this match in your favor. Combine that with Haunting Echoes, and you have a pretty easy matchup. Of course, it's not always that simple, and sometimes they will just toast you alive (usually involving some combination of Skullcap and Madness burn spells), but I have won each of the two or three matches I have played against this deck.

W/G madness - A similar matchup to U/G madness, only easier - since they are just a hair slower and don't have counterspells or bounce.

Beasts or W/G large things - If you fail to draw a Bridge, you will be pummeled by Phantom Centaurs and Exalted Angels. On the other hand, if you do draw a Bridge they will sit there and cry while you burn them out. There is little early-game pressure from this deck, which is helpful since Bridge is most devastating in the mid-game. The real question in this match becomes this: Can they draw more Naturalizes than you can draw Bridges? The answer is probably no, since you have four Bridges and Skullcaps to draw more of them with, whereas they have probably no more than three Naturalizes and no card drawing.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, this is the final piece in the Cabal Cemetery series. My goal in this series has been not only to promote my pet deck, and I think it is a good deck too, but also to illustrate the process of developing and testing a deck for a major tournament such as Regionals. That tournament, by the way, is a mere four days away - time for everyone to make their final deck choice and try to find a ride to wherever the tourney is at. Good luck to everyone playing at Regionals!