Goat Format World Championship 2021 Deck Tech: Zombie!

Though he qualified with Chaos Turbo, Phillip Harald had different plans when deciding what to play at this year's World Championship event. Rather than stick with the tried and true, he's got some undead spice to hopefully take him to victory! 

Deck List

Once considered a rogue strategy at best, Zombie has made its way to worlds! Harald's list almost maxes out on recruiters for some serious aggression. Similar to Delinkquent's FL17 list, there's no Vampire Lord here, just multiple copies of Ryu Kokki, a frightening threat that can run over or trade with many of the format's largest monsters. 

Skill Drain is a frightening meta call that supports the eight floaters in the monster lineup. With an expected higher-than-normal number of Magician of Faith and other powerful effect monsters, Drain seems like a perfect way to cripple the competition. 

Player Insight

Harald had a lot to say about this increasingly popular deck, commenting on his reasoning and card choices. 

I wanted to play a rouge deck, because the current meta is for me really boring. I think the deck could be a good meta call, since Skill Drain is a really strong card.

I build the deck together with my close friend Dimitri Andreß (Winner of Great Trial of Saganma 2006, published in the Cardmaster). The strategy is pretty simple. You want to trade your recruiters and swap them with Creature Swap to gain advantage, floating while Skill Drain is active. With the additional traps you control the board. I came up with the idea at six in the morning  the day before the tournament and was testing different variants with Dimitri.

Just swap your recruiters with Creature Swap or try to get them to float. Ryu Kokki is a strong beat stick, able to beat most of current monsters. Against warrior you are heavily favored in my opinion, against chaos turbo its more 50/50 depending on getting Skill Drain or taking good trades. The board idea is getting Decree plus goat control in game 2-3 to surprise attack the opponent and playing around cards like Nobleman.

Discussing his tournament so far, Harald noted his desire to improve the deck and have fun, as well as shouted out some friends! 

Unfortunately, I lost the first round 0:2 against Chaos Turbo. First game there was nothing to get, after he got Grace/Pog/Del the first two turns, dumping his dead hand with Card Destruction. Second game I was able to keep up, still with a bricky hand, but in the end loosing in the long run. I am just testing the deck to get more fun with the goat format myself and maybe you guys will see it the next tournaments from me.

​I just want to greet my friends Dimitri Andreß (popular through cardmaster), Nikita Andreß (my hidden dad), Jan Becker (Digimon Vicechampion in Germany), Justin Tüllmann (former Yu-gi-oh National player for Germany), Christian Heidepeter (won a local, I guess) and my Team LionzCH, who helped me developing the deck and supporting me for the worlds!