The inspiration for this deck came from a conversation with JFA in discord about The Rotted One. I had tried in the past to make Rotted One decks, but the card is just really hard to play on curve. Taking 1/3 of your health in damage is just brutal. However, I realized that we have a new tool in An Empire Reborn.
The whole idea of Rotted One decks is to make the most out of that 10 damage you take. You want to be able to resurrect it to get the stats without taking 10 more damage. In this case, we can use Empire Reborn as well.
Fair warning: this is a fun deck that I've been playing in casual mode. I don't see it doing too well in mythic/diamond.
The Deck
A pretty cheap deck!
Code:
GU_1_1_CCcCCcIBxIBxHBHCDSCDSIBZIBZKCBKCBCEaCEaIADIADIAJIAJIACIACLADLADIAKIAKIBVIBVKCRKCRCAgCAgIBW
How it Works
This is a pretty straight forward Zombie deck, but with a few surprises.
Rotted One
Of course.
But 2x? The idea is to only take damage from the first one. At 5 mana, you take 10 damage to play it. You hope you don't see the next one until you've pumped enough creatures into the void to be able to play it without taking damage.
Zombie support and Feast on the Dead is mainly designed to support that big damage hit. This is also why we run no other self-damaging nethers in this deck. 20 self-damage is enough. Ideally, we play RO and have a token zombie to fast Feast on the Dead on.
Empire Reborn
We have lots of targets for this:
If you want to get cute, you can even cast it on Takhat and start pulling 2 big nethers to the board each turn.
Takhat
We have so many big-statted creatures that it only makes sense to cap out with Takhat and bring them back. It takes a lot of resources to remove these big guys the first time. Removing them a second time is usually impossible. This also makes sure we can get a lot of juice out of our Rotted Ones. Take damage once and get to put it on the board twice. In my experience, Takhat is much better than something like Raise Dead. Pull the Strings can work, but that's 5 more self-damage.
Takhat arguably works a lot better with big anubians, but if you're running Rotted Ones, she's a solid choice.
Early Game
The early game plays like any other zombie deck. You want to find your scepters and obelisks. If you can keep board control, playing big stats on curve at 4/5/6 mana is usually a win.
Mid/Late Game
Most of my zombie decks run Ray of Destruction for problems like Guild Enforcers. That slot is taken up by 8/8 massive dragons, which can take care of Guild Enforcers and lots of other problems. As you'll see in the gameplay, Empire Reborn lets you trade and then multiply your opponent's problems with fresh 8/8s.
At 6 and 7 mana, your opponent starts to see their old friends returning. Vamp skulls can bring back Fickle Cambions or Obelisks depending on what makes the most sense. They come back at the start of your turn, which makes for fabulous Empire Reborn targets.
Gameplay 1
This vid skips to the good part. The early game just consisted of losing the board to war's blitz creatures, but at 4 mana we pipped into The Rotted One. They play a frontline creature and then it's our time to shine.
After taking out the frontliner, our 8/3 dragon becomes 2x 8/8 dragons with Empire Reborn. He couldn't deal with 1. He definitely can't deal with two. Next turn we get to go face for 32 damage.
Gameplay 2
Again starting right after The Rotted One enters the field. Early game was the usual bs with them removing my scepter and thinking its game over. Control Deception's obvious answer is Hunting Trap, but every Nature deck runs 2x Lightning Strike, so playing the dragon on curve is risky. The safer play was probably Fickle Cambion, but this is a fun deck in casual queue so we went for it. One small thing in our favor: even with a Lightning Strike, our opponent would have to trade out his Briar to clear it.
As in the last game, the desperate frontline play barely slows us down thanks to Empire Reborn.
We forgive our opponent for the long time to think. This is definitely not a usual board state. The Dagan play is solid simply to buff his existing regen creatures.
We don't have any good resurrection targets for the Vamp Skull so we hold on to it. I realize late in the turn that holding my pip for Takhat is a dumb idea and use it. The game is going to be decided in 1-2 turns tops. We draw OTL, which feels good even though we end up not needing it. We play it anyway because playing The Rotted One buys us the privilege of a mild-mannered flex at the end. GG.
Conclusion
Is this deck going to skyrocket you to Mythic? Absolutely not. A single Hunting Trap removes The Rotted One. Most importantly, games going to 7+ mana run into Demogorgans and other really expensive powerful cards. Over the Line is our only out in those cases, but we aren't favored. We also have all the same problems as normal zombie decks: deception stealing your scepter is GG. Aggro decks can be so fast that you can't afford to play The Rotted One and your hand bricks.
All that aside, I'm enjoying playing it in Casual. Give it a shot and let me know what you think!