One Last Gasp. The Marvel Zombies Essential Collection.

Here we come to a close on the Marvel Zombies half of the Marvel Zombie Essential Collection. Before I show you the new cards, I'd like to officially state that Zombie Wolverine no longer has his cost reduction power and instead is just a three cost beat stick. I felt his 5/5 stats were still reasonable because many of your best effects require you to KO many of the stunned characters you keep around around that would boost him to ridiculous levels. After this is posted I'll go and add the new version to the end of the article in which he originally appeared.

So now, let's start with one of my favorite Zombies. Zombie Spider-Man. Through the book Spider-Man brings humor into the fantastically dreadful circumstances of the Marvel Zombie universe. While Hank Pym muses that he's grown to love flesh and would eat other humans even if he cured the zombie disease... Spider-Man capitulates wildly from ravenous beast to whiny, emo Peter Parker who in turn goes right back as soon as food presents itself.

He's like a binge drinker swearing he'll never drink again and how it's ruined his life... But hey, let's have a toast and a shot and just one drink and one more, okay, while we're here we might as well finish the bottle!

His best use is to cost less once you have some dead Zombies to shuffle around. But his flight can also be key to breaking up formations and picking off the weak. I gave him this ability due to his common mode of travel on Giant-Man's shoulder.

I let Peter play with his other Spider Friends pals and whoever they invite to the party because he seems to be pretty normal as long as he's not hungry. So give him a snack pack and your other characters shouldn't worry. Too much.

Zombie Wasp avoids Loyalty - Hardfast because she's both easy to feed and works with the Survivors later, so thematically she doesn't need it and not so powerful that she NEEDS it. A lot of the zombies don't play outside their teams at all, but I wanted some that could infiltrate other decks.

The inspiration for her power was the scene where she takes a bite out of Magento's neck directly leading to his death. At which point she says that the bite she has will last her for days if she shrinks down. So... She disappears with her food and if you want to find her again you'll have to work for it.

Obviously she's going to do a lot of team attacking.

Which works very well with our next Zombie. Zombie Colonel America is a sweet play to get back your hand after you empty it on a big turn of dropping pumps and weenies onto the board.

If you can find a way to recover him he can really start to rack up the cards for you. As in regular continuity, where he's only a Captain, Colonel America is a born leader and takes charge in most of the Zombie battles. Until, that is, his longer than life nemesis Red Skull pulls the remainder of his brains out of his head. Which finally puts an end to the Colonel.



Zombie Daredevil is one of the unlucky main characters who failed to get him a piece of Cosmic Power when the Surfer is taken down by the Hulk. Then he just kind of disappeared from the book. I remember Thor getting taken out, but not specifically Daredevil.

Zombie Daredevil is a hell of a deal as long as you have some stunned characters hanging about. A 3/3 for one is very good. Better yet, like many other Daredevil cards he's available to avoid stunning while attacking up the curve. I did this based on the fact that Magneto hit him with a steel girder and kept coming.

To avoid letting too many people play him with evaders he's got Loyalty - Hardfast. I think the mechanic is a good balancing tool. Though it forces you to play on team, it allows for some cool stuff.





This final guy is probably a design space limiter, but that's not always a bad thing. He doesn't have Hardfast loyalty, but despite a very powerful effect, it's quite limited.


I actually don't see his ability firing off too often on turn 5. He can get a four drop into play by getting one of the o-cost zombies along with Mr. F, but Mr. F is his only four drop target. And you likely played him on four and if you didn't you likely have a character with cost two or less around. I see his ability less as a way to close out a game and more as a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat across from a live Total Anarchy or some sort of Flame Trap like mechanism. Otherwise 10 attack for 5 points isn't bad, but you'll probably prefer a three and two you don't have in play. And Hulk on 6 is a definite closer, so... To be honest as strong as he seems, I don't think he's actually a staple of the deck.

But I do hope you think he's as cool as I think he is. That leaves us with only one card for the Marvel Zombies team. The Interdimensional Teleporter: Ultimate Universe.

Remember Zombie Spider-Man's cost reducer? Remember Hulk's power? Power Cosmic Devoured does it too. Well, this lets your turn those costs into a positive.

So, lemme explain why it says Ultimate Universe on the version line instead of Zombie Earth. The idea is that since your teleporter is bringing back removed characters, it's obviously the Ultimate Universe teleporter sending them back. After all, the Zombie Earth teleporter couldn't just grab people on it's own.

Otherwise the zombies would have had a much easier time getting food. And Zombie Reed wouldn't have had to trick Ultimate Reed into coming through. Speaking of that little trick Zombie Reed played. The flavor text is what he told his young, living counter part when he came through to Zombie Earth and it's easily my favorite flavor text in the set.

So do the Survivors have a Teleporter? Oh yeah. Their's does something a bit different and it may do something very different by the time I'm done redesigning them. You'll see all about that next time though, when I reveal the current, very busted, Survivors deck. As promised here's the deck list for the Zombies.

4x Zombie Colonel America, Who Needs Brains
2x Zombie Daredevil, The Hunger
1x Zombie Hank Pym <> Giant Man, The Galactus
1x Zombie Hawkeye, The Hunger
1x Zombie Hulk, The Galactus
2x Zombie Human Torch, Frightastic Four
4x Zombie Invisible Woman, Frightastic Four
2x Zombie Iron Man, The Galactus
2x Zombie Luke Cage, The Galactus
3x Zombie Mr. Fantastic, Frightastic Four
2x Zombie Spider-Man, Emotional Eater
1x Zombie Thing, Frightastic Four
1x Zombie Thor, The Hunger
2x Zombie Wasp, The Hunger
3x Zombie Wolverine, The Galactus

31 Characters

2x Cosmic Power Amplifier
4x The Dead Shall Walk Again
2x The Galactus Come
4x Head Is Mostly Skull
4x Interdimensional Teleporter, Ultimate Universe
4x It Arrives
4x Power Cosmic Devoured
3x Such A Waste
2x World Devourer?

29 Others

-Mike