The Zombie Legend Showdown

From time to time I check my Commander decks, review them see if  want to change them, dismantle them or in this case change the commander.

At the moment I have a Zombie Tribal deck resided over by Thraximundar but I've been toying with replacing him with Grimgrin, Corpse Born.

So this week I present to you:

The question is should I switch from Thraxi to Grimgrin?

With a CMC of 5 vs a CMC of 7 Grimgrin gets off to a great start. But he is only UB whereas Thraximundar is RUB. That extra access to Red is what made me choose Thraximundar originally and I'll discuss this more a little later on.


For now though being able to cast Grimgrin so much earlier and recast him for the same cost means it's round one to the challenger.

Round 1 to Grimgrin (1/0)

They are both Legendary Zombies the fact that Grimgrin is a Warrior and Thraximundar is a Assassin is neither here no there for the purposes of this Commander deck so this round is a draw.

Round 2 is a draw! (1/0)

First up Thraximundar (6/6) clearly punches harder and can take a bigger whack the the face than Grimgrin (5/5). So in a straight out slug-fest Thraximundar wins.

Round 3 to Thraximundar.  (1/1)

The also enter the battlefield in very different states. Thraximundar has obviously been drinking energy drinks pre-fight and comes into play with Haste read to enter the fray that turn. Grimgrin on the other hand comes into play tapped and doesn't untap during the untap step. He obviously needs a kick up the backside to get him going.

Round 4 to Thraximundar. (1/2)

To untap Grimgrin you need to sacrifice a creature and in doing so you also get to add a +1/+1 counter to him. It's important to note here that he doesn't have to be tapped. If I have 5 2/2 Zombie tokens on the battlefield I could sac them all to Grimgrin making him a 10/10 (5/5 + 5 * +1/+1 counters). Thraximundar has an alternate ability to this but in this round he looses out.

Round 5 to Grimgin. (2/2)

Round 6 is an interesting dilema you get to choose between;

"Whenever Grimgrin attacks, destroy target creature defending player controls..."

or

"Whenever Thraxminundar attacks, defending player sacrifices a creature..."

These are both powerful and similar effects. But, there are major differences as well and the problem is that it's situation within the particular game you are playing.  If they have an indestructible creature making them sacrifice it is great. If the have 20 Saproling creature tokens in play making them sacrifice one of them is not so great. Because of this I'm calling this a draw.

Round 6 is a draw! (2/2)

On the final part of their card text we have:

  

"...then put a +1/+1 counter on Grimgrin."

or

"Whenever a player sacrifices a creature, you may put a +1/+1 counter on Thraximundar."

This is really Thraximundar's response to Grimgrin sac to pump ability.  There's a lot going on here as well. Firstly it states 'whenever a player' that means you as well so if you play Fleshbag Marauder in a four way game, that's going to result in four +1/+1 counters being added to Thraximundar. If you have Grave Pact in play then Thraximundar is going to get very big very quickly.

This ability also means that Thraximundar thrives when Grimgrin's ability is used. While the reverse is not true.

Round 7 to Thraximundar. (2/3)

Now we've finished looking at the cards themselves the discussion has to turn to the colour pie. With Grimgrin only being Black and Blue it looses access to the Red part of the pie. But what does that mean?

Primarily you loose direct damage, but black has life drain to offset that.  So what you really loose is access to cards like these:

Anti-artifact cards! Blue can use counters and black has one artifact hate card and some ability to force opponents to sacrifice permanents but Red rocks when it comes to artifact hate. 

There is an argument to make that by sacrificing a colour you'll find the means to cast certain cards more easily.

Zombie Trailblazer, for example, is BBB making it a hard card to cast early game but by the time your 7+ rounds into a Commander game I'd expect you to have enough non-basic lands in play not to have to worry about this.

It should not be forgotten that this is a Zombie Tribal deck and there are no red zombie lords, that is creatures that boost other zombie's power and toughness.

 

On the counter side to this is the fact that there are some decent Zombies that require red mana that you are loosing access to. 

There are however any number of Blue and Black zombies and associated cards that the biggest argument against Red is the dilution of the deck.

It means you can play more cards that you want to play but couldn't make room for a in an RUB build

Overall I think loosing red could be argued to be a bad thing so that's another round to Thraximundar.

Round 8 to Thraximundar. (2/4)

And the winner is:

Which just goes to show I must be wrong because I am still going to swap the deck around and build a Grimgrin deck called Clone of the Zombies.  Next week I'll deconstruct the deck and show you what I ended up building.

Phil