Brewed EDH: Ghoulcaller Gisa’s Mono Black Zombies

Rise from the Graveyard!

Art: Ghoulcaller Gisa by Aaron J Riley

Welcome to another installment of Brewed EDH:

Todays Featured Commander is:

Ghoulcaller Gisa is a strong Mono-Black Zombies commander, she does everything you think a zombies commander would do being mono black and sacrificing creatures for gains! There a lot of benefits to playing Gisa she is a sacrifice outlet by herself and has the payoff of producing our tribes tokens. While not playing Dimir zombies you do lose some cards but Mono-Black Zombies is still a very fun and effective way to play zombies!

The Deck:

Ghoulcaller Gisa Mono Black Zombies!

Commander (1) 1 Ghoulcaller Gisa Creatures (37) 1 Champion of the Perished 1 Cryptbreaker 1 Gravecrawler 1 Relentless Dead 1 Shepherd of Rot 1 Undead Augur 1 Ayara, First of Locthwain 1 Burnished Hart 1 Cemetery Reaper 1 Death Baron 1 Diregraf Colossus 1 Fleshbag Marauder 1 Headless Rider 1 Liliana’s Devotee 1 Liliana, Heretical Healer 1 Lord of the Accursed 1 Lord of the Undead 1 Murderous Rider 1 Plague Belcher 1 Crypt Ghast 1 Josu Vess, Lich Knight 1 Pitiless Plunderer 1 Soulless One 1 Tomb Tyrant 1 Undead Warchief 1 Vengeful Dead 1 Corpse Harvester 1 Death Tyrant 1 Drivnod, Carnage Dominus 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel 1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier 1 Gempalm Polluter 1 Grave Titan 1 Gravespawn Sovereign 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed 1 Lotleth Giant 1 Razaketh, the Foulblooded Planeswalkers (2) 1 Liliana, Death’s Majesty 1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General Spells (16) 1 Corrupted Conviction 1 Entomb 1 Reanimate 1 Tragic Slip 1 Corpse Churn 1 Exsanguinate 1 Damnation 1 Deadly Plot 1 Dread Return 1 Pile On 1 Vraska’s Contempt 1 Dark Petition 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Living Death 1 Zombie Apocalypse 1 Army of the Damned Artifacts (2) 1 Urza’s Incubator 1 Phyrexian Altar Enchantments (7) 1 Animate Dead 1 Dreadhorde Invasion 1 Oversold Cemetery 1 Meathook Massacre 1 Phyrexian Arena 1 Endless Ranks of the Dead 1 Dictate of Erebos

Lands (35) 1 Cabal Coffers 1 Command Beacon 1 Lake of the Dead 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx 1 Phyrexian Tower 26 Swamp 1 Unholy Grotto 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 1 Volrath’s Stronghold 1 War Room

Why Ghoulcaller Gisa?

There are a lot of great options for Mono-Black Zombie commanders like Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer and Ayara, First of Locthwain. I believe all are great options for Zombies but Gisa’s ability to create zombie tokens gives her the edge over the others. We have a lot of creatures in our deck and many ways to recur them so there should never be a shortage of zombie tokens on the field. Ghoulcaller Gisa allows us to be a combat threat early in the game and curve into our more late game threats. We typically can close out games with our combos or with overwhelming combat!

Deck Overview:

Since we are a zombie tribal deck we are packing zombie tribal staples like Gravecrawler and Champion of the Perished and Urza's Incubator. We are very much a standard Mono-Black zombies deck playing a lot of the tribe staples that you would expect. Since we are zombies our creatures and tokens do die frequently but we have some payoff for that like Pitiless Plunderer allowing our zombie tokens to be turned into treasure and let us cast cards like Exsanguinate or Army of the Damnedto deal huge chunks of damage to our opponents and gain us some life back. Another one of our payoff cards for a lot of our creatures dying is Dictate of Erebos which can be very good with Gisa on the battlefield as well as a sac outlet like Phyrexian Altar. Well a lot of creatures that die are disposable like our zombie tokens we do have a reanimation package for cards that we do want back such as Ayara, First of Locthwain. Our reanimation package includes Reanimate, Dread Return,Living Death and Animate Dead. Since we are a Mono-Black deck we are also packing some creature destruction like Zombie Apocalypse and Damnation, Tragic Slip and The Meathook Massacre. Gisa is the best way for us to amass a lot of creatures and combined with cards like Endless Ranks of the Dead and Plague Belcher can get out of hand quickly with token production and taxing our opponents life. We have some high prioity targets for Gisa’s ability one of the best of which being Soulless One which can create a crazy amount of zombie tokens with relative ease. The biggest top end of our curve is Razaketh, the Foulblooded who we can use to assemble the combos we can get him out early with our reanimation package but he is largely either a sac outlet or way to assemble the combos. Overall Gisa’s Mono-Black Zombies is a fun version of zombies with all of that zombie flavor!

Strengths of the Deck:

• Strong against Aggressive Strategies
• Can make a lot of power early
• Combo Potential to end games
• Gisa’s ability lets us sacrifice in response to targeted removal

Weaknesses of the Deck:

• Weak against creature hate
• Weak against Artifact / Enchantment Strategies
• Not a lot of Card draw

Deck Stats:

Sample Hands:

Main Win Conditions:

Our primary way of winning is by overwhelming our opponent with attacking and our zombie tokens from Ghoulcaller Gisa but we are also packing a few infinite combos!

Gravecrawler + Phyrexian Altar

Result: Infinite ETB. Infinite LTB. Infinite death triggers. Infinite sacrifice triggers. Infinite storm count. Our payoff for this combo is by utilizing Ayara, First of Locthwain

Champion of the Perished +Gravecrawler + Phyrexian Altar

Result: Infinite ETB. Infinite sacrifice triggers. Infinitely large Champion of the Perished. Infinite LTB. Infinite death triggers. Infinite storm count. Our payoff for this combo is by utilizing Ayara, First of Locthwain

Conclusion:

In conclusion I think that Ghoulcaller Gisa is a very fun Mono-Black zombies commander with a lot of payoff and a lot of different ways to close out games. Even though we are Mono-Black we still have the ability to interact with our opponents creatures and finish out games with combos!

Thanks for reading to the end!