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Much Abrew: Zombardment with Champion of the Perished (Modern)


Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. A few weeks ago, we played a Goblin Bombardment Zombie deck on stream. While the deck was fairly competitive and fun to play, it only really had one play: grinding out damage and value slowly with sacrifice synergies. Today's deck is similar but with a massive upgrade in Champion of the Perished. The new Innistrad: Midnight Hunt one-drop is a huge deal for the deck, giving it a way to win quickly by beating down with a massive threat while still keeping the sacrifice synergies that made the original powerful. While Champion of the Perished was solid in Standard and good in Historic, Modern just might be its real home. The combo of Gravecrawler, Champion of the Perished, and a sacrifice outlet like Carrion Feeder or Goblin Bombardment is quite powerful, allowing us to sacrifice Gravecrawler for value, recast it from the graveyard for just a single mana, and grow Champion of the Perished along the way; a synergy that simply doesn't exist in newer formats. Are Zombies the real deal now in Modern thanks to Champion of the Perished? Let's get to the video and find out on this week's Much Abrew About Nothing

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Much Abrew: Zombie Bombardment with Champion of the Perished

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Discussion

  • Record-wise, we ended up going 4-1 with Zombies, narrowly missing the 5-0 with a close three-game loss to Jund, which managed to grind us out with discard and removal.
  • It's hard to overstate just how big of a deal Champion of the Perished is for the deck. While we still picked up some interesting Aristocrat-style sacrifice wins, we also had multiple games where we played a copy or two of Champion of the Perished early on, and it basically just ran away with the game. These fast, aggro, jank-'em'-out kills are something that older versions of Zombie Bombardment were missing. I really think that Champion of the Perished, all by itself, moves Zombies up a tier in Modern. 
  • In a lot of ways, Zombies are better suited to take advantage of a Champion of the Perished–style card than Humans are, and Champion of the Parish has long been one of the best cards in Modern Humans. Thanks to Gravecrawler, Zombies are really good at having tribe members enter the battlefield repeatedly, growing Champion of the Perished along the way and almost turning the one-drop into a combo piece, along with being a great aggro threat. 
  • It feels a bit weird to play Mayhem Devil in a Zombie tribal deck, but it's so good with the sacrifice plan that it's worth the weirdness. With a Mayhem Devil on the battlefield, we can sacrifice a creature to Goblin Bombardment to deal two damage to any target, which is a great way to close out the game, if we can get our opponent's life total low with Champion of the Perished and our other aggressive creatures, while also giving us a way to shoot down small creatures like Dragon's Rage Channeler and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, which are everywhere in Modern at the moment.
  • Prismatic Ending is super powerful—so powerful that we're willing to splash into white just so we can play it in the sideboard, even though we're a base black-red deck, a combination of colors known for their removal. It's that strong.
  • So, should you play Zombie Bombardment (with Champion of the Perished, of course) in Modern? I think the answer is a clear yes. While I'm not sure the deck is tier one, thanks to Champion of the Perished, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it be a legitimately competitive deck in Modern. Champion of the Perished allows the deck to win quickly, while cards like Undead Augur and Geralf's Messenger (along with the sacrifice plan) give the deck the ability to play a longer, grindier game, which is a great place to be. If you're a fan of the Zombie tribe, it seems like their time may have finally come in the Modern format!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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