Zombie cards in Magic: The Gathering are creatures presented as animated corpses, usually characteristic for the black color. But they can also be seen in other colors sometimes as well.
The upcoming Kaldheim set is adding a number of interesting Zombies with various effects. While some impact your board and library, others can impact your opponent’s board, library, or graveyard. These creature cards are flexible and can fit into various decks.
Here are the best five Zombie cards in MTG: Kaldheim.
Draugr Necromancer
- CMC: 4(B)
- Type: Snow Creature – Zombie Cleric
- Stats: 4/4
- First ability: If a nontoken creature an opponent controls would die, exile that card with an ice counter on it instead.
- Second ability: You may cast spells from among cards in exile your opponents own with ice counters on them, and you may spend mana from Snow sources as though it were mana of any color to cast those spells.
Draugr Necromancer is an upcoming four-mana cost Zombie Cleric allowing you to send creatures to exile instead of empowering your opponent’s graveyard. It can fit alongside Snow lands into a Zombie tribal deck due to its ability to nullify opposing decks tactics that rely on a wide graveyard pool. It can be a great tech card for Historic against creatures such as Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath, or Cat decks.
Draugr Thought-Thief
- CMC: 3(U)
- Type: Creature – Zombie Rogue
- Stats: 3/2
- First ability: When Draugr Thought-Thief enters the battlefield, look at the top card of target play’s library. You may put that card into their graveyard.
This is one of the rare non-black Zombie creatures. For the cost of three mana, you can scout a library and put the card into the graveyard. This is overall a great ability since it can help improve your milling potential or prepare a bad draw for your opponent if you don’t want to mill it. While the stats of the creature might not be great for it’s cost, its effect makes up for it.
Karfell Harbinger
- CMC: 2(U)
- Type: Creature – Zombie Wizard
- Stats: 1/3
- First ability: Repeatable every turn, add one blue mana, spend this mana only to Foretell a card from your hand or cast an Instant or Sorcery spell.
With decent 1/3 stats for only a two-mana cost, Karfell Harbinger can help you early on to answer to the board by giving you one free blue mana to either Foretell a card or cast a Sorcery spell or Instant. It’s quite flexible and can be good blocker against some of the cheaper creatures your opponent runs.
While the limitation of the mana might seem like a major restriction, if you fit this card in a deck with plenty of spells or Foretell cards, you can easily make use of it every turn.
Jarl of the Forsaken
- CMC: 4(B)
- Type: Creature – Zombie Cleric
- Stats: 3/2
- Keyword: Flash
- First ability: When Jarl of the Forsaken enters the battlefield, destroy target creature or planeswalker an opponent controls that was dealt damage this turn.
- Second ability: Foretell two (B) – during your turn, you may pay two and exile this card from your hand face down. Cast it on a later turn for its Foretell cost.
The Jarl of the Forsaken allows you to remove any beefy creatures for a fairly cheap cost. The Foretell and Flash combination makes it an amazing addition to most decks in the Limited format. It can be set up as a trap card early on for your opponent, stopping them from making over-aggressive plays considering that they won’t know what you have prepared.
Once they commit for a play with a powerful creature, you can Flash Jarl of the Forsaken to destroy it.
Narfi, Betrayer King
- CMC: 5(UB)
- Type: Legendary Snow Creature – Zombie Wizard
- Stats: 4/3
- First ability: Other Snow and Zombie creatures you control get +1/+1.
- Second ability: Three Snow cost, return Narfi, Betrayer King from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped. (Snow can be paid with one mana from a snow source)
Narfi, Betrayer King is a nice addition to a deck that wants to have a wide board of Snow and Zombie creatures. It allows you to buff them up with +1/+1 to their stats, making them much deadlier on the board and allowing you to dish out a lot of damage. While the stats of Narfi are quite weak for its cost, only 4/3 for a five-mana cost, the board buff can easily make up for the difference if you have a couple of creatures on the battlefield.
