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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!


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Zombie Apocalypse
Dark Ascension

Reviewed January 18, 2012

Constructed: 3.30
Casual: 3.80
Limited: 3.50
Multiplayer: 3.65

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst.  3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating

Click here to see all of our 
Card of the Day Reviews 

BMoor

Zombie Apocalypse

On Monday I mentioned that Loyal Cathar's transformation trigger allows it to survive board wipes. That's a good thing, since this card exists. This card just might invalidate one deck in Standard (Humans) and create viability for a second (Zombies). Believe it or not, Standard is currently supporting several Humans builds. Theres a UW Humans deck, a monowhite Humans aggro deck, and a U/G Humans deck that uses Moonmist to flip Mayor of Avabruck and Delver of Secrets. That last deck tends to win before turn six if at all, but the others will be absolutely devastated by this card. Otherwise, most non-tribal decks tend to run some Humans whether they realize it or not-- Humans have been sort of omnipresent in unnoticed, trace amounts ever since their inception in Mirrodin 1.0. But of course, you don't play this card as a board wipe, as even Human tribal decks tend to have a few non-Human creatures. The real genius here is that you get to unload your entire graveyard's worth of Zombies back onto the battlefield. Since "mill yourself" decks are pretty easy to build these days, this thing than dump a scary amount of creatures into play. But Standard isn't where I expect to see this card do its best work. I'm really afraid of what this card can do in Casual decks, that draw from all the best Zombies from Onslaught block and forward. When you're Swampcycling Twisted Abomination, Dredging creatures into your graveyard with Shambling Shell, and cycling Grixis Sojourners, then the Zombie Apocalypse is going to be a fearsome night of the living dead indeed!

Constructed - 3.5
Casual- 4.75
Limited- 4
Multiplayer- 4.5

David Fanany

Player since 1995

Zombie Apocalypse
 
I'm a member of STAAAAARS! . . . Sorry about that. It's still hard to believe that Raccoon City is really gone. For that matter, it's going to be hard for a lot of fans of white to believe that black got "Wrath of God plus bonus" cards in two consecutive blocks. Yeah, you have to build your deck around Zombie Apocalypse, and it's not always the easiest card to cast, but when you do . . . well, I don't think the idea that constructed Magic has an element of "cast this card and win" needed any more ammunition. Multiplayer settings are often overloaded with Wrath of God effects as it is, but when you consider how many popular creatures and Commanders are humans - Eternal Witness, Magus of the Tabernacle, Captain Sisay, Godo, Bandit Warlord, Riku of Two Reflections - this card suddenly looks likely to muscle itself into the top ten.
 
Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

Today's card of the day is Zombie Apocalypse which costs six mana and will return all of your zombies from the graveyard to play tapped, then destroy all humans in play.  The human destruction aspect may not factor into every game currently which leaves it as a flavorful bonus to the primary effect of putting a large number of creatures into play. 
Supporting the concept with effects that sends cards from your library to the graveyard feeds into a reanimation theme and is a good starting point for a variety of Black or Blue/Black builds.  Overall this is a potentially competitive, if slightly expensive endgame move that can be difficult to respond to and may gain even more use as the remaining cards in the block are revealed.
 
For Limited the human type is likely to be represented in most decks, but the number of zombies available in any given pool will also be smaller.  The triple Black in the cost requires at least half of your mana sources be Black which combined with a possible lack of appropriate targets for either effect can make it hit or miss in Sealed.  For Booster it is worth a first pick despite the drawbacks as it isn't really the type of card you want to pass and supporting it with zombies should be somewhat easier.  The six mana casting cost itself isn't really an issue in the format and with even a small number of eligible targets the card advantage should win the game.
 
Constructed: 4.0
Casual: 4.0
Limited: 4.0
Multiplayer: 4.0

TDogg

The card of the day today is Zombie Apocalypse.  The colorless and triple black to put all zombies in your graveyard onto the battlefield tapped then destroy all humans.  Personally I think this card could be pretty good to build a deck around.  Mill yourself and cheat out all the zombies in your graveyard.  Think about it, all the new fatty zombies get put into play for six mana.  The destroy all humans is just a bonus in most cases.  I also think this is a great post-day of judgement.  The sad part about this card is it's speed.  Six mana is difficult to speed up in black.  Maybe black, blue, green mill yourself zombies will work out if the format ever slows down.  In limited a wrath effect is always a nice option to have.  For multiplayer its always good that it states your graveyard.
 
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 3.0
Limited: 3.0
Multiplayer: 3.0

John
Shultis
Phoenix
Gaming

      Welcome back to Pojo.com’s card of the day section. We are previewing Dark Ascension this week, and today we are looking at Zombie Apocalypse. Zombie Apocalypse is a rare black sorcery that costs three black mana and three generic mana. Zombie Apocalypse says return all zombies to the battlefield tapped, and then destroy all humans.

     As I said in yesterday’s review, there are tons of amazing cards in this set, and it looks like it will be a very strong, highly sought after set. Zombie Apocalypse is one reason why. While Zombie Apocalypse may not see it’s way much into Standard tournament play, side boarded perhaps just in case, it will see a lot of play in certain other formats. The combo potential is just astounding here. When combined with Ashes of the Fallen, all your creatures in your graveyard could be Zombies if that is what you choose when you play it, thus returning each and every creature from your graveyard to play tapped. And all it would really take is to use Xenograft, and either Donate it, or use Puca’s Mischief to send Xenograft over to your opponent. This would be able to make all of their creatures Humans, and thus destroy all of their stuff, and bring all of your dead creatures back to the battlefield.

      But perhaps this card WILL see some serious play in standard. With how powerful several of the human creature cards are, and the fact that there are a lot of spells that will produce Human tokens, I think that standard is going to be filled up soon with human based decks, and that just means that there will be an equal part zombie, werewolf, and spirit decks, since these are the main tribal components right now. And once Human decks begin to take off, I think that Zombie Apocalypse will be right there to bring the back to the verge of extinction.

      By the way, just a small note, place in the Top 8 at the Dark Ascension Game Day, and a full art foil Zombie Apocalypse is all yours!
 
Limited: 5/5
Casual: 5/5
Constructed: 5/5
Multiplayer: 5/5


Paul

Welcome back readers todays card of the day from Dark Ascension is Zombie Apocalypse one of the coolest names on a magic card in recent memory. Being able to return all zombies is certainly powerful and destroying humans can be useful in a pinch. In standard depending on the prevalence of humans and zombies obviously this card could have a major impact as a wrath variant in certain matchups or simply a major zombify brining your zombies back, it’s hard to judge this cards impact on constructed formats not seeing the rest of the set but I anticipate this card as a slightly powerful and possible situational sideboard card. In extended and modern the same concept applies zombies are not that powerful so just destroying humans doesent justify the cost of this card compared to cards like Damnation or Black Suns Zenith. In eternal formats this is too expensive and not really relevant. In casual and multiplayer this card is solid randomly destroying humans is secondary to being able to reuse zombies provind you with some nice advantage. In limited it could be great if you draft a lot of zombies or if an opponent drafts lots of human, sort of a middle of the road card. Overall an extremely flavorful card that has a moderate power level.

Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 3.0
Limited: 2.0
Multiplayer: 3.0


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