Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver | Upping the Average 

Petition for Joey to be on game knights

I spent all day listening to wilhelt decklist videos while working, and this is up there as one of my favorites!

Listening to you talk about commander makes me want to play commander too

joey talks about reflections of littjara *necroduality has entered the chat*

Unexpectedly began looking for cards to swap in to my Wilhelt precon after I was really impressed and excited with the precon, I like some of these suggestions! First time I saw the Blade of Selves idea!

I've played Wilhelt for a couple of weeks now and I've found the decayed zombies are just excellent grease for this undead machine!

This was my favorite deck tech for Wilhelt. Thanks!

I like your series already a lot, but I loved this episode. Sweet card recommendations and passionate EDH talk with your handsome host Joey, just great!

Thank you for this. That Blade of Selves mention made my night. I would have never considered it thank you 😎

I love that your doing a budget and more expensive upgrades at the end :) Please do Lynde

I just got my Wilhelt precon and now bought a couple of upgrades. Nice to see every single card I bought in this list. Feels like validation to my purchases :P

I would love to see an episode on Inalla wizard tribal

I was waiting for this upping the average

Like the deck. Would love to see you do an episode on Prosper with how popular it was from the AFR set

Faces of the past turns cards like Gravespawn Sovereign, Cleaver Skaab and Cryptbreaker into insane value.

I just ordered a Tombstone Stairwell this morning for my Wilhelt deck. I'm loving this zomboi so far.

There are many fun routes for this zombie commander and I love it ! You can go more graveyard with Crow of the dark tiding, Stitcher, Master of Death, Mire triton... and Living Death/Patriarch Biding ? :) But Teferi's Veil is a great add to keep the decayed dudes after attacking. Corpse Cobble can sacrifice them into a huge zombie threat as well. Murderous Rider is an OK removal on theme. Phyrexian ghoul is another free zombie sac outlet Endling and Liliana's reaver are great midrange zombies. Geth and Grave Titan are late decent zombie beaters. Species specialist is an insane draw engine (and are kinda on flavour too) Sudden substitution for the pun... Take this decayed zombie and I take this spell. Thanks !

I don’t know why no one is talking about Death Tyrant with the decayed zombies he keeps creating 2/2 for you. Essentially since a creature is considered attacking all the way till the end of the combat phase the decayed zombie die during their attack and voila unending zombies. And you can recur death tyrant if needed.

What a badass video mate!! You just earned a subscriber, 'm building this deck myself and it's damn fun!! What do you think abour Liliana's standard bearer? I thinnnnk it can outperform Rise of the Dread Marn pretty easily since you'll be saccing tokens like crazy anyways and it will give you mad raws! Also as a removal spell consider Pongify or Rapid Hybridization!

Death Tyrant swaps out your attacking decayed zombies for fresh non decayed zombies

I'm pretty new, and im still trying to figure out deckbuilding! My main struggle is actually how much Non zombie support to put in, like how much generic removal, opponent discards, counterspells, draw cards, mana, etc. Do you have any advice on how i should proportion out my main strategy vs generic support?

I was waiting for this

Oh yeah, another hit mate!

I thought about switching my zombie tribal commander from Varina to Wilhelt, but I couldn't bear to lose cathar's crusade or elesh norn, so I just added him in instead. He's such a beautiful card and I regret not adding him sooner.

In the precon you get the 2 copies of the commander. I used the thick one to make a go wide fun zombie deck with all the lords etc . The second copy i built it as a combo deck full of sac outlets and all the nasty drain cards .

What a coincidence, my precon just arrived in the mail today!

Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos are cards i have use in my previous zombie decks (to great effect).

Ngl, the positive attitude kept me interested throughout the entire video

The card Teferi's Veil will allow you to phase out your decay tokens before they die to the decayed trigger. It also protects them from sorcery speed board wipes.

Lazotep Plating is so good card, that I slam it into all my blue decks, man it's really good replacement for Heroic Intervention.

Rooftop storm +cryptbreaker+intruder alarm seems like a no brainer. This value package has won me a few games in Grimgrin and wilhelt looks like a wonderful fun place to jam it next.

Species specialist is a monster in this deck despite not being a zombie

How about gempalm polluter? I know it only targets 1 player but there's enough "return to hand" cards to make it hit each player eventually

This video reminded me that I pulled almost an entire playset of Relentless Dead back in SoI and have no idea where they are now :(

This seems like a very fun deck.

How is Dictate of Erebos or Grave Pact not in here? You can also pair Gisa, Glorious Resurrector with it because when you sac a creature, grave pact triggers, then at the end step you get it with decayed that can also be sacrificed. Pairs well with Grimgrin too.

Came to the same conclusion about endless ranks and took it off from my varina deck few months ago. Such a shame i wanted it to work so bad but it was only good when i was already in a good position.

Love the upgrades, but feels like needs some more counter magic and instant removal, being in dimir allows you to run that.

Does the poppet factory removes good effects that are being applied to zombies like death touch and menace?

I went out of my way to add the bolas's + top + aetherflux combo to the deck for a couple of reasons: if you pull the gravecrawler combo, you can close the game with reservoir (consistency), and top has awesome synergy with Wilhelt's end of turn ability: activate top before sac'ing a zombo to choose a card gives you extra consistency. I thought at some point that rooftop + Bolas's Citadel would work too, but not really. It does, however, work with poppet factory + wilhelt, since you can sac 10 tokens, get them back, sac them again and drain the whole table. I have to say that I feel my wilhelt deck is an aristocrat deck at this point, and I play into card advantage to pull one of the many combos my deck has.

I gotta point out if you're struggling with your wilhelt deck, it's probably because you're trying to split your focus between aristocrat and aggro token swing. Wilhelt just isn't the aggro zombie commander. He's way better if you double down on the aristocrat and token sacrifice strategy

Great video as usual! However am I the only one who never gets what the named three parts actually mean? x) I saw no difference between Dawn of the Dead and 28 days later and when it came to Zombieland I was like"for sure it's gonna be about lands or more broadly the manabase!" but niet it wasn't lol

Bring 👏 back 👏 my 👏 ghouls! 👏👏👏

Joey, besides Necroduality, what do yo think about these other cards from VOW? Archighoul of Thraben Headless Rider Fell Stinger Overcharged Amalgam Geralf, Visionary Stitcher. Would you play both Reflections of Littjara and Necroduality in the same deck? What about playing tutoring effects so as to assemble combos more consistently? I'm thinking of Sidisi who's also a zombie. Talking about double purpose zombie cards, what do you think about cutting a removal spell for Murderous Rider? What about Fierce Guardianship and Deadly Rollick? Are these cards any good? I mean, they depend on the Commander being in play. Thanks! BTW, awesome content! Cheers!

You could try slipping Vogar, Necropolis Tyrant in somewhere too. He fits the zombie tribute thing pretty well

Joey, I recently started on a zombie deck similar to yours pushing token generation and have a few suggestions. Reflections of littaria is ok but still limited to both creatures and them being cast. This card may have been released after this video was made but consider extravagant replication. For 1 more mana, every turn you choose what to replicate instead of relying on casting spells. Additionally it’s inexpensive and NOT limited to creatures. Why settle for only 2 warchiefs or if you want to be really mean you can simply have the enchantment copy itself! You left this one out on your mana rock vid too and it’s a beast. As a bonus it is also on theme and it’s called crowded crypt. It generates black mana BUT every time a creature dies it accrues a counter which can be sacrificed for an enormous amount of decayed tokens in a deck like this! This one is off theme but in my opinion worth it. Why limit yourself to death triggers? This creature can also trigger life drain on ANY CREATURE THAT ENTERS THE BATTLEFIELD. Which in mid game can do massive damage. Also as a bonus it can be tapped to sac a creature to draw a card. Costing only 3 black mana. If you guessed Ayara then you get a gold star! I see you have some disdain for decayed tokens but I found a VERY STRONG WAY to utilize them. An inexpensive card called DEATH TYRANT. All you need to do is attack with every token you have every turn. If it survives then sac it before the end of combat. The key point being as long as it is declared as an attacker you can then replenish all of your decayed tokens for non-decayed tokens. Comboing with ayara too?! YES! As a bonus once you hit that combo and death tyrant gets removed; it even has a self recursion ability! This in my opinion is the single most under-rated zombie related card in the game. Period(crowded crypt being pretty good too)! Lastly, with things like grave crawler etc…add in Tormod, the desecrator so every time you have a gy action even if an opponent tries to gy hate then you get more tokens! Ps with the ability to generate insane amounts of tokens endless ranks of the dead becomes more relevant! Enjoy!

One of my favorite budget zombie discoveries was Zombie Trailblazer. A political substitute for uroborg. And zombie master. Yeah it’s only one zombie at a time but with cards like dirgeaf colossus or unbreathing horde you can make a giant one.

Can we get Kyler, Sigaurdian emissary up next please?

Minions murmurs. Recent reprint. Draws same as pact of serpent. Also as a flavor budget play. Try mask of griselbrand. Slap it on your decay zombie. Wash with life. Draw 2-5 cards depending on lords in play for 3 mana

I am so glad you didn't take out empty the laboratory I feel it can be a Wincon that is ridiculously good

The equip artifact deathrender definitely has Something amazing it can do, though im not sure what exactly. I'm sure some amazing synergy with it exists in this deck, though.

While expensive, Ebondeath, Dracolich provides a way to do the gravecrawler combo at instant speed, letting you swing with your zombies if you do it just before your turn. Maybe its not an instant win and opens you up to be interacted with but who doesn't want to win with a zombie horde?

A nice fit also is Skirsdag High Priest

I am glad I grabbed a tombstone stairwell when it was cheap but am very upset I only grabbed one copy of it

If only commander wasnt sooo expensive. I would love to play it

Wouldn't the Curse of the restless dead work well with the Poppet stitchers flip ability?

honorable mentions are exchanging your liliana for Liliana dreadhorde general. It works much better with this synergy and for extra punch consider both Liliana of the dark realms and corpse harvester. Both provide really good ways to ramp swamps and corpse harvester can tutor a zombie for every sacrifice. while not on theme but can be useful is hell’s caretaker. For just mean effects I present what I think is the second most under-rated zombie ever! Blue counter spell decks got you down? Long as you have some creatures to tap then I present ZOMBIE TRAILBLAZER. most use it for the superficial means of enabling swampwalk but it has a more sinister use. By turning all your opponent’s lands into swamps. Kinda hard to counter your spells without blue mana! :) If you wish to spread the joy even further then I also present infernal darkness. I know what you may think; this affects me too. Another cheap add manascape refractor will ensure your mana is fixed. Enjoy!

Am I the only one who loves Black Market? Very underrated card, especially in this deck. If you have it and Stairwell out for one round you're gonna be popping off.

Kind of surprised of the non-mention of zombie-to-be Syr Konrad.

I'm just throwing this out their... Intruder alarm for untap creatures 😎

Draugr necromancer is great if you're running snow lands and is a cool stacks piece against other creature/tribal players

Tombstone Stairwell is downright evil in this deck.

No mention for teferi’s veil? Keeps your decay zombies alive and protects your creatures from sorcery speed board wipes

Man I'm having a hard time keeping my Varina deck, Wilhelt looks sick.

11:39 One of the first games I won with Wilhelt, I won using Drown in Dreams. Opponent had a cascade deck that was popping off, but he was running out. So I used all of my mana to kill him out of the game

good stuff in here and i agree. Making a buttload of Decay tokens doesn't really do much for Wilhelt...Hasn't stopped me from slapping every zombie generating enchantment in the deck tough XD And my personals strat is less on the lords (like i removed 1 or 2 lords from the basic deck) and more emphasis on giving them flying and deathtouch. Making them a bit less powerfull but deadly and unblockable (mostly).

Just picked this deck

Ye ye ye, my favourite boy

I really wanted this deck but I live nowhere near a LGS and Amazon sent me the coven counters deck by mistake.

Liliana untouched by death and shambling ghast is another infinite that’s fun to pull off

Do you guys take requests ? Could we get a vid on kyler ?

Bone Splinters is a nice removal. 1 black, sac a creature, destroy another. And tragic slip. -1/-1, or morbid -13/-13.

I wanted to upgrade my precon but god damn everything priced up

Please do Kyler, Sigardian Emissary!

mikaeus the profane wouldn't work well with this deck?

I have a foil Endless Ranks of the Dead from original Innistrad. I hate that it always gets the cut.

Would sholdred* the whispering one be good filler for this deck ???????????

I feel like a deck built around getting Tombstone Stairwell and Endless Ranks of the Dead together could be fun but I don't know that Wilhelt is that deck. EDIT: I got a Tombstone Stairwell for my Syr Konrad deck. It's definitely fun. The very first time I played it I passed the turn and won during the next players turn.

Is Gisa&Gerald and Cleaver Skaab not too slow?

Also why is black market not in here????

what about stuff like bone splinters more sacrifice and removal id take that for a lower cost deck

Also a little bit weird how yer editing a decklist that already has cards added into the precon?

Is undead Alchemist any good? Seems like it would actually make it harder to win

Also yeah thx. I don't agree with all yer points but i understand some of them. And yes i had similar doubts about Gravespawn sovereign, Like sure i can tap 5 decay tokens that might not be useful otherwise buuuut....I'd rather play the 2 CMC zombie that let's me tap 3 creatures for 1 dmg to all opponents XD or maybe just Silumgar Scavenger..Or i can just wait for Crimson vow. And yes get rid of that Drown in dreams...to costly for what it tries to do in THIS deck.

Necroduality makes great Combo with Rooftop storm. What's better than a free cast zombie? Two of that free cast zombie! Get a Sedraxis alchemist in there to bounce all your ETB zombies for extra extra good times.

Me: I can get 100 zombie tokens and 100 decayed tokens for about $7-8. Now how to make that many.

I threw in necroduality and it does some work

got a combo for yall. corpse cobble, wilhelt and poppet factory :)

Grave pact with decayed zombies is so hard.

I added a Grave Pact in mine. Only you is allowed to have creatures

No blood artist mention?

Why reflections of lithara instead of necro duality?

When will you do a chatterfang episode?

I'm a bit of an inexperienced player, but Grave pact sounds nice in here

Great upgrade here as always ! Was wondering why you didn't put Death Tyrant in it ? Decayed zombie dies during combat so the tyrant will make regular zombie each time you attack with those.

three words. raise the palisade

Death Tyrant should be in any deck that Wilhelt is leading.

I think telling people to not include gravecrawler outside of combos is a mistake. Having gravecrawler plus wilhelt and a sac outlet can net you multiple tokens per turn, I often also have a card like headless rider to get normal zombie tokens at the same time or even card draw triggers in death, or maybe cast triggers like diregraf collosus. Gravecrawler is just such an enabler as soon as you have a repeatable sac outlet I feel it is an essential card no matter your build.

Do Etrara Next!... Please...?

My question is, why does nobody play Skullclamp in this? Seems like a no-brainer.