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 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 the new release from Stardust Overdrive, 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 makes Mezuki and Book of Life completely useless as well).

Another weakness is the fact that Zombies tend to have low ATK power for their levels, 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 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 like Malevolent Mech - Goku En or Zombie Mammoth used with Vengeful Servant and Creature Swap is effective 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 a zombie deck or a deck with zombies in it the strategy wont work. So it's suggested to use Skull Flame, Burning Skull Head and Everliving Underworld Cannon. They might not do as much damage but they are more effective because there are less card effects to stop the combination, as well as the fact that Skull Flame is easily summoned using Call of the Mummy or Pyramid Turtle etc. Also, 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. Additionally, Goblin Zombie and Sangan could be used to put Burning Skull Head in your hand (where it is most effective) and Skull Conductor can help special summon up to two from your hand to inflict 2000 damage to your opponent in one turn. Another helpful card that can also cause extra damage to your opponent is Dark Room of Nightmare.

Zombie Swarm/Chaos Zombie Deck
With the new forbidden list from March 1st 2010 Chaos Sorcerer is now Limited, making this deck-type less effective.

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, it 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 indirectly have merit such as Getsu Fuhma or 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. Note that the rulings on Kasha state that monsters treated as Zombies by the effect of "Zombie World" that are returned to the deck are not counted towards Kasha's attack.

Zombie D.D/Beat down Deck
This deck is about using 2 Shutendoji and Necroface combined with Soul Absorption. The purpose of this deck is to remove from play as many cards as you can in order to give Necroface extreme power. You can recycle your deck, gain 500 life points for each card removed from play using Soul Absorption and remove an exaggerated ammount of cards removing from play Necroface using Shutendoji's effect. The bad thing about this deck is that you might probably deck out quickly because of the removing from play from the top of your deck and the draw power you get with Shutendoji. But remember, you can still recycle your deck with Necroface's effect. Doing this, you can play around with your opponent and make them give up. It is a really annoying strategy but it works.

Zombie Synchro Deck
This deck works by using the equip card Supervise on Il Blud to special summon zombies from your hand or your graveyard and then using them for synchro summoning. It works like a Gigavise deck but is admittedly slower, but with a bit of ingenuity and skill, it can work pretty well and it is possible to be able to synchro summon as much as three times per turn when everything works. The main focus is to summon Il Blud and then using Supervise to have it gain its effect quickly. This being a zombie deck however, it is possible to summon Il Blud by discarding it to the graveyard and then using Book of Life to special summon it and then Gemini summoning it. Also, one can also use Pyramid Turtle's effect once it has been destroyed by battle and sent to the graveyard to special summon Il Blud from one's deck. Once Il Blud's effect has been activated, simply start special summoning zombies to swarm the field and then use tune monsters to tune with them. Plaguespreader Zombie is the ideal tuner monster in this deck but Krebons, Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind, and Dark Resonator have all good synergy with this deck since they all have Dark Attributes. To speed up this deck, Hidden Armory is useful to search out for Supervise and cards such as Goblin Zombie can help bring Plaguespreader Zombie from the deck to your hand. Also,Cards such as Mezuki can help summon Il Blud from the graveyard in case it is destroyed and the monster card Shutendoji can help re-cycle Mezuki's effect. With all the tribute fodder available from 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. Despite the recent ban lists that have completely ruined zombie decks, there are still ways to get around it to show that the Zombie archetype is still a formidable present in Yugioh.

Zombie Beatdown-Mill
As the name says this is a beatdown and milling deck using Zombies, when you finish milling using a combo that includes cards like Allure of Darkness, Shutendoji, and Necroface, this milling insures that the opposing player won't be able to have good draws, seeing that his/her good draws are way below in the graveyard, this technique starts by drawing Allure of Darkness and removing Necroface, then - 5 for your opponent, but unlike the strategy up above ("Zombie D.D.") this does not focus on using Necroface but instead uses it's second ability on milling, so instead of summoning Necroface you drop it using Zombie Master's effect and probably summon Shutendoji seeing it's low attack and it would get beaten often, then repeat until you are satisfied. After milling as much as you can let Shutendoji use it's effect to get Il Blud and another either 2400 or 2600 attack zombie, because Il Blud and your powerful zombies were probably milled by Necroface, but if some of your zombie monsters where not yet milled by Necroface, then send out Pyramid Turtle then battle and get out a 2400 attack freak or use Return from the Different Dimension to finish the job. reminder: when you are finished with milling strategy it is very important that you get as much zombies as you can in the end, but it is also good (but not recommended) to stack up your deck till' 60.(If all fails bring out Necroface out to the kill)

Zombie Exodia
This deck is used to gather all 5 pieces of Exodia into your hand using cards to draw more card, including Card of Safe Return, since Zombies focus around swarming from the graveyard, and Shutendoji to add even more zombies to your hand, and if you have any pieces in the graveyard, this can remove and return them when combined with Zombie World. And maybe even stalling with Spirit Reaper.

Recommended cards Monsters:
 * Spirit Reaper
 * Shutendoji
 * Mezuki
 * Zombie Master
 * Il Blud
 * Marshmallon
 * Red-Eyes Zombie Dragon
 * Spear Cretin
 * Pyramid Turtle
 * Immortal Ruler
 * Sangan
 * Necroface
 * The Creator/ The Dark Creator
 * Plaguespreader Zombie
 * Patrician of Darkness
 * Exodia the Forbidden One
 * Left Arm of the Forbidden One
 * Right Arm of the Forbidden One
 * Right Leg of the Forbidden One
 * Left Leg of the Forbidden One

Spells:


 * Call of the Mummy
 * Gold Sarcophagus
 * Allure of Darkness
 * Book of Life
 * Soul Absorption
 * Giant Trunade
 * Mystical Space Typhoon
 * Heavy Storm
 * Card of Safe Return
 * Double Summon

Traps:
 * Wall of Revealing Light
 * Gravity Bind
 * Gold Sarcophagus