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Editor: Yaro Starak. Saturday 11 May 2002.
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 Card Review: Zombie Infestation
Discard two cards from your hand: Put a 2/2 black Zombie creature token into play.
Expansion: Odyssey
Although it isn't the best limited card in the world,
many decks have found out the true awesomeness of this
card when teamed up with madness and flashback spells.
Limited: I started off not liking this card in
limited, but recently I have seen it played to
reasonable effect. It was at Nats when I chose this
card mainly because there was nothing in the pack, and
I was going R/B and if I needed an extra card I could
always throw it in. Later on in Torment I received a
Fiery Temper and a Violent Eruption. Those two cards
along with Chainflinger (threshold) and the lack of
creatures I had, made me decide to maindeck it. I got
to use the madness abilities twice and the excess land
I got helped me out with extra creatures which
would've otherwise killed me. I still wouldn't
recommend it as a high pick but when there's nothing else
I'm sure you might find it neccessary to put in.
5th-7th pick.
Type II: Ahh this is where it has come into it's own.
In harnessing the power of madness with this cheap
black enchantment, it spells card advantage and savage
beatings all round. A deck that qualified at least 3
(maybe 4) Sydney players for Nationals was a R/G/B
deck given the name "Wurmbies" (eck I hate this name
and I refuse to call it that anymore... from now on it
is called Type II Wild Zombies!!). It uses cards like
the infestation and wild mongrel to play arrogant
wurms, basking rootwallas, fiery tempers, violent
eruptions, as well as put big roar of the wurm
sorceries into your graveyard, all the while making
zombies or pumping your Mongrels for extra damage. A
second turn Zombie infestation usually meant death to
the opponent, and backed up by flametongue kavus,
terminates, and card drawers like tainted pact and
skeletal scrying you can see why this deck qualified
quite a few players... and this is only one
combination of colours for the zombie infestation
deck. People have tried it with blue (UGB) and also
just two colours (G/B or U/B with upheaval) but I
don't think we've seen the end of possible
combinations for this card. (Think end of turn
discarding a couple of cards like basking rootwallas,
arrogant wurms and the new blue incarnation to make 2
zombies, 2 fat creatures and all flying for a next
turn 11 flying damage 4th... it's all good)
Price: If this was a rare card it would go for $6-$7.
As its an uncommon $2.00-$2.50. Foiled =) would go
for $5. Its no Roar of the Wurm in uncommon
comparison but still decent.
Until next time I'll see you next time
Scott Smith aka ~OpTiMusPriMe
Undoubtedly the best card to make use of those Players Rewards Zombie
tokens is the Infestation. Already proven to be Tier 1 in Constructed play it even proves decent in
Limited.
Limited: Due to slightly less choice in choosing mana curves in Limited,
you tend to have to play higher land counts in draft and sealed.
Come the late game it is very easy to draw excessive amounts of land and
die because of it, obviously the Infestation is okay for turning
these into more 2/2 guys. However that on its own doesn't really make it
cut it; initially the investment is quite high and it is likely to be a
more or less dead card early on in the piece. Note that it is rare to get
very many madness effects to go along with this simply because all
the madness cards are quite good and are likely to get taken fairly early
in the Torment pack. But when you're low on cheap guys, the
Infestation is fair enough.
Constructed: Well Type 2 has Infestation/Upheaval, the so called Wurmbies
and I think once Judgment comes out there'll be more, especially
for OBC. Extended has Wild Zombies and it may also pick up another
archetype post Judgment. Personally I quite like Wurmbies. It is good fun
and has been showed to be okay, qualifying two Sydney players for Nationals
and also sending one of the Sydney players to Top 8 Nats. However
it does tend to run out of gas with a quickness at times, hence my decision
to always play at least 2 Skeletal Scryings in the deck.
Note that Post Judgment this thing could be insane as good synergy (I won't
call it a combo) with something like Genesis and Basking Rootwalla
With two Wallas and two Genesis, well that could just be downright stupid,
although rather mana intensive.
Value wise, well its an uncommon so not much. I'd rate the foil version
higher than Scott though, at around 8 or so.
dj
Jason Street
Well, it's certainly an interesting card - There are more good reasons to
discard nowadays than there used to be. The thing is, are there good things
to discard besides the obvious madness cards, and is the card disadvantage
worth it?
Besides dropping land you don't need into your zombie machine you can also
try other tricks. The most obvious is to pitch a couple of Squee, Goblin
Nabob's into it (what a horrible card to pluralize). This gives you a zombie
every turn as well as not requiring you to throw away cards you want to
play. Another tactic would be to throw expensive creatures into the
graveyard and then reanimate them. Traditional reanimation decks using
Animate Dead style cards would benefit from this, I'm not sure about the
usefulness to a Living Death/Recurring Nightmare reanimation deck, but it
could be worth a shot.
Type 1 offers a lot of fun things to do with this card. Try casting a Wheel
of Fortune and throwing anything in your hand away for some zombies. For
even more fun set off a Memory Jar at the end of your opponents turn: Seven
of their cards into the graveyard for no good reason, three zombies for you.
The other card that may be of use is Time Spiral, which gets the discarded
cards back. A more casual approach would be to slap down a Howling Mine and
if nothing good comes up that turn make a new zombie.
I suppose it could go in a zombie deck, but then again there's a lot of
better enchantments for a zombie deck. You could have fun with this card and
Tombstone Stairwell, throwing a lot of creatures into your graveyard for
tokens now and then let some more climb out of the stairwell later.
Value? Not much, since it really doesn't do anything on it's own. $1 maybe,
but only if you really want to play a deck with it in and need them in a
hurry.
Jason
One of the more interesting uncommons in Odyssey,
Zombie Infestation combos nicely with Madness cards
and has some pretty cool artwork to boot.
Limited - As the other guys have said this is a decent
card in limited but not a 1st or 2nd pick. As most of
the cards you combine this with are in Torment then it
can be a bit of a gamble. At worst you can pitch spare
lands to create zombie tokens so it would definitely
be maindecked.
Constructed
Extended - Zombie Infestation has a lot of promise in
this format as there are loads of cards that interact
with the graveyard. Reanimator decks spring to mind
with Ashen Ghouls, Krovikan Horrors and other
graveyard nasties that won't go away. I guess this
could have been used to good effect with Necropotence
as there are always situations when you are at 1 life
and have no kill cards in your hand (usually just
excess land)- with an Infestation in play it turns all
those swamps into an undead army.
Type 2 - This has already proven it's worth in this
format in the "Crazy for you" deck (what sort of a
name is that?) and can fit in any deck that abuses the
Madness mechanic. It has also seen play as a sideboard
card in Tog decks and combined with Upheaval can be
pretty nasty. I would like to see this played with
Lord of the Undead as an army of Zombies facing off
against your opponent would be pretty cool (reminds me
of Resident Evil).
OBC - I think this is one of the defining cards in the
format and makes enchantment kill a must. Black/green
seems the obvious choice here as green has Arrogant
Wurm, Roar of the Wurm and Rootwalla. It would be nice
to have red in there as well for Violent Eruption and
Fiery Temper but there are not enough dual land types
to go around.
All in all a very versatile cad but because it is an
uncommon it's value is not going to be high - $4 at
the most.
Dan
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Zombie Infestation (Uncommon)
Scott Smith
Danesh Jogia
Dan Turner