The Magic of Video Games: Black Ops Zombies

“When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”
-George A. Romero

I’ve always had a deep love for video games ever since I can remember. In high school where I was studying game design, I discovered the wonderful trading card game known as Magic: the Gathering and instantly loved it. The idea of combining those two loves has always fascinated me, and I’m certain others as well. While others might have their fave game characters adorn just their pet cards, or even might have made a deck or two loosely inspired by their fave games, I aim to take that idea one step further. My plan is to make a 100-card commander deck where as much of the deck as possible is inspired by the flavor and function of my favorite games. 

One series of games that gets a bad reputation in general gaming spheres is Call of Duty: Black Ops. In practically every Black Ops game in the last 12 years there are three primary modes: the Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies. The Campaign is always a generic yet moderately shocking, fairly nationalistic, hollywood militrary mess of tropes with so many explosions it makes michael bay films look like A24 pictures. Black Ops Multiplayer is notorious for broken gimmicks and guns as well as some of the most toxic scum to ever howl into a headset. One can find some mindless fun in these two modes, as long as one is critical of what’s shown (and proactively mutes other players). Zombies Mode is a whole other story, and the focus of this article. 

I have always found Black Ops Zombies to be incredibly fascinating. From the arcade style gameplay surviving increasingly difficult rounds and amassing points that allow you to purchase perks and weapons, to its intricate easter eggs that range from a johnny cash cover of an soundgarden song to telling a frankly bewildering story consisting of, but not limited to; Evil scientist, A bunch of mobsters, alternate dimensions, blowing up the moon, the titanic, JFK, giant robots, werewolves, dragons, time travel, a good dog named fluffy, and George A. Romero :). It is a game with a very simple premise that encourages players to play the game how they like to play. If you just want to get a new high score, great. If you want to uncover the intricate easter egg, also great. That idea of being able to enjoy the game how you want to lends itself exceptionally well to making a very unique commander deck.

In making a commander deck like this it’s always good to find the most appropriate commander first. Who is the overall closest in look, function, and flavor. After some thorough research I have come to the conclusion that Varina, Lich Queen is the most fitting and would represent evil Samantha Maxis. Varina is most fitting for these reasons 

1. Is a science-fiction femme character that looks like they’re trapped in a machine and sees time differently (not unlike evil Samantha Maxis in the older Zombies maps)
2. Both Varina and Samantha Maxis raise zombies and send them out to attack
3. Esper colors (white, blue, black) are fitting for going forward.

Since evil Samantha Maxis is our pilot at the helm of the deck, logically the deck should be played from her perspective. You are the being commanding the seemingly infinite horde of the undead to devour and destroy the main 4 characters of various maps. Real world analog of that being the other 3 players at your average commander table. This idea will be the general direction of the rest of the deck, minus a handful of exceptions. That brings us to our first wave of notable characters! Here, we have Edward Richtofen , Ludwig Maxis, Dr. Monty, The Shadowman, and fluffy…

Now that the main antagonists of Zombies are introduced, it’s time to go through some of the other things that the villains have in the way to stop the players (and allude to other things in the zombie games that are similar). Cards like the Mystery box and the various wall buys and obstacles needing to be cleared are easy to figure out. Stuff like the soda machines, teleporter, and consumables/power-ups were a little bit harder to find representations for in Magic. Again, we’re going for flavor and function in order to be represented well. In the Black Ops games, perks stick around until you get downed and then you have to repurchase them at their respective machines. With that in mind it reminded me of how equipment works in Magic. Though the creature dies, the equipment stays on the field. Some equips that fit with the flavor of the perks are: Stamin-Up, Mule Kick, and Double-Tap. For those familiar with the games that leaves out the two best perks for playing. Have no fear. My answers for those two are cards that perform their effects, but in more of an MTG fashion. Angels Grace for Quick Revive, and Elixir of Immortality for the legendary Juggernog. Power-Ups/Gobblegums have no good way to express themselves in a Magic deck, except for the nuke/insta-kill power ups which have been represented via the two board wipes in the deck, Vanquish the horde and Damn.

The final aspect of Black Ops Zombies that I’d like to cover in detail, and that really drove the direction of deckbuilding, is that while I enjoy watching gameplay, I am terrible at figuring out playing the game. That is to say, solving the game’s infamous easter eggs and learning of its incredibly convoluted plot is not easy or straightforward. In almost every map there’s some way to go about uncovering a part of a cosmic chronicle by collecting things that help you move forward, killing zombies in specific spots/ways, and searching for various oddities and locations. After all of that is done eventually the players fight some boss or have to play the map differently resulting in a more challenging experience until you beat the game. My idea on how to display this fascinating challenge is to utilize pieces in our deck that help the person playing it assemble an infinite (or arbitrarily large) combo resulting in a mass amount of resources. The way these pieces fall into play are as follows: play rooftop storm and then play Acererak the archlich for nothing; this lets you venture into any dungeon that is not the tomb of annihilation. Since the tomb of annihilation has not been completed, Acererak then goes back to your hand. From there you play Acererak again, and also again, choose not to venture into the tomb of annihilation. Rinse and Repeat until satisfied. Game. Over.

There are a ton more features and quirks to Black Ops Zombies, but the biggest joy is in figuring out where things fit and what they represent/do. For the rest of this deck I have built with that puzzle-solving in mind (I encourage you to match the cards in the “Maps” category with the various maps in Black Ops Zombies). With that being said, and our main three aspects of Black Ops Zombies ironed out, I present the complete decklist which I greatly recommend turning the tags on for (shoutout to Moxfield for being an amazing deckbuilding website): 

Black Ops: ZOMBIES – A Casual(ish) Themed EDH Deck

Now that you have seen the decklist, ideally with tags turned on, there are a few important things worth mentioning: 

1. This deck is very expensive. At its minimum, at the time of writing this, the deck weighs in at a massive 7,117$ and 7¢ USD. I strongly suggest not building the deck in paper, but if you choose to here is what I suggest:

• Swapping out overly expensive cards with ones you own or think are more fitting. I’ll elaborate more on this point later. 
• Play it virtually on services such as cockatrice or table top simulator
• Proxy the deck (Which is good and cool actually)

2. The deck is a bit disjointed as to where it fits in power level-wise: it has cute zombie tribal stuff, some moderately powerful voltron effects, and a fairly hard to interact with infinite combo. This weird space of power level the deck is in can be very hard to define and, in turn, communicate about to the average casual commander table. My suggestion to resolve this issue is to start off explaining what the deck can and often does do. After that, express why you would like to play this deck. Any accommodating playgroup of genuinely good people should let you play the deck at least once, multiple times if communication is done well. Rule 0 at its finest.
3. I have designed this deck to represent and show as much of the Black Ops Zombie games as I reasonably can, but I am not perfect and have likely missed a lot of cards that might be better fits. Echo of eons or time reversal could replace timetwister, revel in riches could replace necromancer’s covenant, etc
4. As I have mentioned earlier, one of the things that makes Black Ops Zombies so good is being able to play it however you want. Some people try and do the easter eggs, some people try and get high levels, some people just want to shoot zombies. This deck is designed so that one can tinker, change and customize it to how they view and play Black Ops Zombies. Tune the deck towards your personal gameplay philosophy.  The deck can be tuned up to be a lot more dangerous by taking out some high mana cost pieces (army of the damned & necrotic hex) with stuff that adds additional combos (tainted pact & laboratory maniac/thassa’s oracle/the jace that does the lab man effect) or it can be tuned down by taking out overly powerful cards and replacing them with cool zombie tribal stuff. Because who doesn’t love cool zombie tribal stuff.

Now that you have read this far, I’d like to propose a wildly different way to play, using the cards in the deck and 4 other friends with precon commander decks. I call it “Versammlung der Toten” (or “Gathering of the Dead”). This way of playing is not unlike the supplementary MTG game Archenemy mixed with Commander. In this game mode you, or whoever is playing the Black Ops Zombies deck, starts with 160 life, an emblem that says “you have no max hand size” and the cards dreadhorde invasion, endless ranks of the dead, and field of the dead on the battlefield. These cards are indestructible, have shroud, and can not be sacrificed for the rest of the game. After those are separated, remove all the Power-Up!,  equipments, other perk-a-cola cards, and the mystery box and put them into a separate deck, shuffle it, then put it aside.

This deck will represent Wall Buys and the players not playing the Black Ops Zombie deck can pay 2 mana and draw a card from the deck any time they could cast a sorcery. They may play those cards as if they were theirs at any time they could usually play those cards. If a card from the Wall Buys would enter any other zone other than the battlefield, it is instead shuffled back into the Wall Buys deck. Once all of that is set up, whoever is playing the Black Ops Zombie deck draws 7 cards and goes first, then after their turn the other four players draw 7, chose to mulligan or not (one free mulligan is allowed), then take their turn similar to how things are done in 2 headed giant. Any time the player playing the Black Ops Zombies deck would have one of their non-token permanents go to any zone besides the battlefield, it is instead returned to their hand with the exception of the commander which follows standard commander rules. The game ends when either all of the precon players have died, or the person playing the Black Ops Zombie deck has. This I feel represents the perfect mix of the gameplay of Black Ops Zombies combined with commander very well.

Now that I have explained how I went about building the deck with the flavor and function of Black Ops Zombies, some important notes about how to play it, and a brand new unique way to play magic, it is time that I wrap up this article.I want to thank Magic Arcanum for giving me the opportunity and motivation to write this, my friend Daedalus for acting as my expert of the Black Ops Zombie games, my Dad who let me play Call of Duty (as well as encouraging my love for learning and video games) and you dear reader. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and I hope you are doing well my friend. Keep an eye out.

• Drew.

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