Zombie Deck

There are a few main concepts for a Zombie Deck. One focuses on swarming the field with Zombies, usually from the Graveyard, and the other is milling your opponent's deck out, star cards include Il Blud, Mezuki, Goblin Zombie, Plaguespreader Zombie, Pyramid Turtle, Kasha and Zombie Master.

Strength and Weaknesses
Depending on the type of deck its strength can vary, but the overall power of a Zombie Deck remains one: its ability to quickly swarm the field with monsters (it is not uncommon to clog up one's entire Monster Cards zone in one turn) and gaining quite powerful draw power through Allure of Darkness and/or Shutendoji.

Excluding the Zombie Mill variant, however, a Zombie Deck has some weaknesses. The most notable weakness of the deck is its dependence from the Graveyard. While the extreme swarming capabilities of the deck can overcome the aforementioned lack of sheer power, cards like Macro Cosmos, Dimensional Fissure, D.D. Crow, and nearly every other card that can remove monsters from the game or lock the Graveyard can effectively put a Zombie player to severe disadvantage, if not outright disrupt one's strategy and cause the loss of a duel. Burial from a Different Dimension and Imperial Iron Wall can help to partially solve the problem (though the latter keeps Plaguespreader Zombie in the game, it makes Mezuki and Book of Life completely useless). In other words, the remove from play deck can be the worst enemy for zombies because the cards that target the graveyard are totally useless. But the Zombie Deck has another weakness in cards like The End of Anubis that disable your Graveyard or Vanity's Fiend that don't allow you to perform Special Summons.

Another weakness is the fact that Zombies tend to have low ATK power for their level, compared to other Types (Examples include Il Blud and Vampire Lord). This can severely hamper a Zombie Deck player if his/her opponent uses high DEF monsters to stall the game. There are a few cards that can help counteract this problem, most notably Burden of the Mighty, Solidarity and Pyramid of Wonders. The final, Temple of the Sun, is a slightly more situational card that still would sit rather well in a deck focused on graveyard power.

The March Banlist has crippled the deck even further by moving Mezuki back to Limited and keeping the ban for Card of Safe Return, which continues to take away a major draw force in Zombie decks. However, with the release of the Zombie World deck, it provides for the player to gain field, grave, and swarming advantage over his opponent making Zombies an extremely powerful and effective type.

Zombie Burn Deck
The Zombie Burn deck can be played different ways. Combinations such as Malevolent Mech - Goku En or Zombie Mammoth with Vengeful Servant and Creature Swap are effective ways to do massive amounts of damage easily, but cards like Prime Material Dragon and Rainbow Life or Dark Bribe, Solemn Judgment etc, can stop these effects all too easily. In addition, if you are facing another Zombie deck or a deck with Zombies in it, the strategy won't work.

Another Zombie Burn strategy involves inflicting damage when Burning Skull Head is Special Summoned from the hand with the effect of Skull Flame and Skull Conductor, coupled with Everliving Underworld Cannon and Dark Room of Nightmare for additional damage. They might not do as much damage in a single hit, but they are more effective because there are less card effects to stop the combination, and Skull Flame is easily summoned using Call of the Mummy or Pyramid Turtle, with the added advantage of having 2600 ATK.

Shutendoji and Burial from a Different Dimension can help to bring back removed from play Skull Flames and Burning Skull Heads. Supersonic Skull Flame can also unleash additional damage simply by having Burning Skull Heads in your graveyard, and searchers such as Goblin Zombie and Sangan could be used to put Burning Skull Head in your hand.

Zombie Sworn/Chaos Zombie Deck
The Zombiesworn deck uses the self-milling effects of Lightsworn monsters to send Zombie monsters to the Graveyard to revive with Mezuki. Chaos Sorcerer is also used because of the abundance of LIGHT and DARK monsters.

With the new forbidden list from September 2010 Chaos Sorcerer is now Semi-Limited, making this deck-type more effective than it was last format.

Zombie World Deck
This deck type, as the name suggests, is based around the Field Spell Zombie World. This deck is very versatile, as almost any of the Zombie staples can be splashed in. This deck can be brutally effective against many other decks, as Zombie World, as well as changing all your opponents monsters on the field and in the graveyard into Zombies, also stops your opponent from tribute summoning anything other than a Zombie-type monster. This negatively affects many commonly used decks, such as Monarchs and Plants. Many cards are designed specifically to work with the field spell, such as Doomkaiser Dragon or Trap of the Imperial Tomb. These cards have very good effects, but are sometimes better to avoid, as they are useless without the field spell. Other cards have indirect merit, such as Getsu Fuhma, Marionette Mite, or even Tutan Mask when used on your opponents to stop pesky spells or traps. This deck has many Zombie staples such as Pyramid Turtle, Zombie Master, Goblin Zombie, or even Plaguespreader Zombie if you want to Synchro Summon. Also, you might want to add a Krebons or two to get a better chance of summoning Goyo Guardian. The key player in this deck is without a doubt Il Blud. Getsu Fuhma can be used to destroy most monsters with higher attack than your zombies if need be. Kasha can also be included, but remember that monsters treated as Zombies by the effect of Zombie World that are returned to the deck are not counted towards its attack.

Zombie D.D./Beat down Deck
This deck involves using Shutendoji and Necroface to remove from play large amounts of cards, similar to a Necromill Deck, followed by recycling Necroface with Shutendoji's effect and Normal Summoning it as a massive beatstick.

With this technique, you can recycle your deck, and use Soul Absorption to gain Life Points quickly. However, you might deck out quickly because of the speed you can remove from play from the top of your deck with the draw power you get with Shutendoji, but you can still recycle your deck with Necroface's effect. Doing this, you can greatly annoy your opponent.

Diva Zombie Deck
This deck uses the revival effects of Zombie monsters with Deep Sea Diva's effect to Special Summon other Sea Serpents (most notably another Deep Sea Diva) to quickly Synchro Summon. This deck type is heavily reliant on Mezuki and its effect to quickly Special Summon Zombie monsters in the Graveyard, along with Burial from a Different Dimension to recycle it.

This deck was severely slowed by the Limiting of Burial from a Different Dimension in March 2010.

Z-Heroes/Absolute Zombies
This deck uses the Destiny Hero engine for extra draw power, as well as using Destiny Hero - Malicious to Synchro Summon quickly. It is also known to include the aforementioned Diva engine, as they work with Miracle Fusion to Fusion Summon Elemental Hero Absolute Zero. This deck is also less reliant on Divas for Synchro Summoning.

BludVise Synchro Deck
This deck works by using the Equip Spell Supervise on Il Blud to Special Summon Zombies from your hand or Graveyard and use them for Synchro Summoning. It works like a Gigavise deck but is admittedly slower. However, with a bit of ingenuity and skill it can work pretty well and it is possible to Synchro Summon almost as quickly. The main focus is to summon Il Blud and then use Supervise to have it gain its effect.

Since this is a Zombie deck, Il Blud greatly benefits from Zombie revival cards such as Book of Life. Also, Pyramid Turtle can quickly Special Summon Il Blud from the deck. Once Il Blud's effect has been activated, simply Special Summon Zombies to swarm the field and then use Tuner Monsters to tune with them. Plaguespreader Zombie is the ideal tuner monster in this deck, but Krebons, Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind, and Dark Resonator all have good synergy with this deck since they are all DARK monsters.

To speed this deck up, Hidden Armory is useful to search Supervise and cards such as Goblin Zombie can help bring Plaguespreader Zombie from the deck to your hand. Cards such as Mezuki can also help summon Il Blud from the graveyard in case it is destroyed, and cards like Shutendoji can help recycle Mezuki's effect. With all the tribute fodder available because of Il Blud, it is not a bad idea to add a few Caius the Shadow Monarchs to the deck for field removal. With a bit of work, this deck can be pretty competitive.

Zombie Beatdown-Mill
See also: Necromill OTK As the name suggests, this is a beatdown and milling deck using Zombies. This technique starts by drawing Allure of Darkness and removing Necroface, then removing 5 cards from your opponent's Deck and disrupt their strategies. Unlike the "Zombie D.D." deck's strategies, however, this does not focus on using Necroface's first effect to make it a beatstick. It uses its second effect to mill, so instead of summoning Necroface, you drop it using Zombie Master's effect and summon Shutendoji, then repeat until you are satisfied. After milling as much as you can, let Shutendoji use its effect to retrieve a removed from play Il Blud and or other high-attack Zombies, because they were likely milled by Necroface. You can also send out Pyramid Turtle to get onto the field any strong Zombies still left in your deck or use Return from the Different Dimension to finish the job.

When you are finished with the milling strategy it is very important that you get as many Zombies as you can onto the field, but it is also good (but not always recommended) to stack up your deck with 60 cards, so that if all else fails, you can Normal Summon Necroface and use its second effect for the kill.

Skull Servant
This deck combines a self milling strategy to send skull servants from your hand and deck in order to power up King of Skull Servants. Typical milling engines can be used to run this deck, such as the fast milling from Magical Merchant or the power of destroying opponents cards while milling with Lightsworns Ryko and Lyla.

Zombie Exodia
This deck is used to gather all 5 pieces of Exodia into your hand using cards to draw more cards, including Card of Safe Return, since Zombies focus around swarming from the graveyard, and Shutendoji to add even more draw power. This deck also enjoys the stall power of Spirit Reaper.