Magic the Gathering

Constructed

Examining Vampires’ New Toys

By Russell Tassicker ⋅ February 4, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

One of the strongest decks in stan­dard lately has been the mono-black tribal Vam­pires. Derided on one hand because it can’t beat for­mat bogey­man Jund, and on the other because it vir­tu­ally builds itself — there were vir­tu­ally no tour­na­ment playable stan­dard vam­pires before Zendikar, and only just enough to make up the 60 cards after it. Now with World­wake’s release the deck has a whole bunch more options. But which ones cut the mus­tard, and which should be left in the land of forty card decks?

You can have any colour as long as it’s black

Set­ting aside the odd vari­ant splash­ing red, let’s con­sider a recent list from a big stan­dard tour­na­ment. Four­teen year old Eric Palmer­d­uca won the Dal­las SCG $5k with this bog stan­dard list:

Vam­pires is based on a very solid curve of crea­tures, but it isn’t an aggro deck. Crea­tures like Blood­ghast and Vam­pire Nighthawk are very strong but they don’t com­pare on the early turns to the likes of Steppe Lynx or Hellspark Ele­men­tal. To make up for this short­fall in play­ing the aggro game, the vam­pire deck has some use­ful tools against both aggres­sive and con­trol­ling decks. Ten­drils of Cor­rup­tion is one of the best removal spells in the for­mat, and Marsh Casu­al­ties out of the side­board is a real one-sided beat­ing. If Vam­pires holds on against the aggro assault, the card advan­tage it is capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing com­bined with its beefy end-game threats should be enough to ensure the win. Against con­trol decks the many cheap crea­tures – espe­cially Blood­ghast – can pile on over­whelm­ing pres­sure, and Mind Sludge is crush­ing in if resolved. Vam­pires is thus able to com­pete with both aggres­sive and con­trol­ling oppo­nents in stan­dard, and as you can see in Eric’s list above he has a selec­tion of tools for both matchups main deck and in the sideboard.

All of this is imma­te­r­ial, of course, if World­wake can’t deliver some tools for the deck to fight Jund or strengthen other decks suf­fi­ciently that Jund is not such a preva­lent metagame choice. Jund seems like it was pre-built to destroy Vam­pires. Nearly every crea­ture Jund plays brings with it some card advan­tage, and it makes the sin­gle tar­get removal of Vamps look silly. Mean­while Sign in Blood can’t keep up with the dev­as­tat­ing com­bi­na­tion of Blight­ning and cas­cade, and Jund’s endgame Dou­ble Drag­ons are an excel­lent trump for Blood­witch and Noc­tur­nus. Cedric Phillips, a recent advo­cate of Vam­pires, admits that Jund is basi­cally an auto-loss but feels that the mono-black dudes have good enough matchups else­where that the deck is a good choice if you can dodge Jund. With that brief under­stand­ing of Vam­pires place in the cur­rent metagame, let’s see what World­wake brings to the table.

Back in Black

There are seven actual vam­pire crea­tures in World­wake, and they are the obvi­ous place to start. In alpha­bet­i­cal order:

Anowon, the Ruin Sage
A one sided The Abyss is seri­ously good for a con­trol­ling vam­pires deck, and Anowon can beat for 4 on top of that. At 5 mana he is con­tend­ing with the amaz­ing Malakir Blood­witch though, which is prob­a­bly the best weapon Vam­pires has. Tough­ness 3 is very vul­ner­a­ble in this for­mat also, and unlike The Abyss you have to wait until it gets back to your own upkeep until your oppo­nent has to sac­ri­fice a crea­ture. It will be a rare vam­pire deck that will pre­fer Anowon to Malakir Blood­witch, I think. He will cer­tainly be strong in casual vam­pire decks though, and he makes a pretty the­matic EDH general.

Blood­husk Rit­u­al­ist
Vam­pires is not averse to play­ing 2/2 crea­tures but it wants more out of them than this, I think. Play­ing this you will want to spend at least 4 mana on it, at which point it is a 4 mana, 2/2 Rot­ting Rats. At 5 mana Mind Sludge will make your oppo­nent dis­card 5 cards, while the Rit­u­al­ist will only force the dis­card­ing of 2 cards. Rit­u­al­ist is def­i­nitely not unplayable, but vam­pires just has bet­ter options available.

Butcher of Malakir
7 mana is nor­mally beyond what con­structed decks are will­ing to spend on a sin­gle card, unless it is incred­i­bly game-altering like Cruel Ulti­ma­tum. The high mana cost will keep the Butcher out of com­pet­i­tive con­structed despite his awe­some Grave Pact-like abil­ity and 5 power fly­ing body. When your oppo­nent trades his Path to Exile for your Butcher of Malakir and has 6 mana left to play some removal-resistant threat of his own, you will under­stand why.

Kalas­tria High­born
Vam­pire Hex­mage has never seemed quite up to snuff next to Blood­ghast in my vam­pires deck – it is great against planeswalk­ers, but it is quickly out­classed against the beefy early drops float­ing around in other decks. Kalas­tria High­born looks like an excit­ing replace­ment in this slot, espe­cially paired with Blood­ghast. It may also be worth con­sid­er­ing Vam­pire Aris­to­crat in a combo-ish vam­pires deck, sac­ri­fic­ing mul­ti­ple Blood­ghasts, pop­ping fetch­lands to bring them back, and pay­ing B each time in a man­ner rem­i­nis­cent of Arcbound Rav­ager and Dis­ci­ple of the Vault in the old, bro­ken, banned ver­sions of Affin­ity. The only issue with the High­born is that you often don’t want to hold mana open with Vam­pires, as you have plenty of 2 drops, 3 drops, 4 drops and 5 drops that you want to put into play on sched­ule. I will def­i­nitely be test­ing this as soon as possible.

Pulse Tracker
If Vam­pire Lac­er­a­tor is not good enough, then Pulse Tracker cer­tainly isn’t. The art also doesn’t work too well on a magic card, espe­cially a black one.

Quag Vam­pires
Despite the many swamps going around in stan­dard these days, I don’t think swamp­walk is an excit­ing enough abil­ity to make up for Quag Vam­pires’ mediocre stats. Mov­ing on…

Ruth­less Cull­blade
A 4/2 for 2 mana is very effi­cient, no doubt, but it suf­fers from the same prob­lem as Guul Draz Vam­pire – it has a low cast­ing cost, but it’s really poor on the early turns. By the time your oppo­nent is at 10, you prob­a­bly have 3 or 4 lands out at least and can drop seri­ous crea­tures like Vam­pire Nighthawk or Nocturnus.

Once you go Black…

So Kalas­tria High­born is the only vam­pire crea­ture that really jumps out at me as worth test­ing, but there are plenty of other good­ies amongst World­wake’s black cards. I won’t be address­ing each one, only the ones wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion. If I don’t men­tion a par­tic­u­lar card that you think is worth look­ing at for vam­pires, let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Abyssal Per­se­cu­tor
One of the two mega-hyped cards of the set along with Jace, the Mind Sculp­tor, Abyssal Per­se­cu­tor has been talked about in just about every deck sport­ing black. I hope I don’t have to explain why, as a 6/6 fly­ing tram­pler for 4 with a draw­back that can be worked around. Vam­pires is pos­si­bly one of the bet­ter homes as it has plenty of ways to get rid of him when the oppo­nent is at neg­a­tive life between Gate­keeper and Ten­drils, and the easy pos­si­bil­ity of accom­mo­dat­ing more removal like Bone Splin­ters. If you want to go for a less tribal-centric build and drop Noc­tur­nus it is def­i­nitely worth try­ing Per­se­cu­tor, if you can find any at a rea­son­able price.

Dead Reck­on­ing
This removal spell seems decep­tively strong. Killing an opponent’s crea­ture and get­ting back a Noc­tur­nus or Blood­witch sounds good. Unfor­tu­nately most of the crea­tures in vam­pires have a low power, rely­ing on Noc­tur­nus to buff it up when in play, but I def­i­nitely think this card is constructed-worthy somewhere.

Death’s Shadow
The most dis­ap­point­ing card of the set for some peo­ple, I’m sure – the 13/13 for 1 that can never actu­ally be a 13/13 for 1 in nor­mal cir­cum­stances. It has a lot of neg­a­tive syn­ergy with vam­pire cards like Blood­witch, Ten­drils and Kalas­tria High­born so I don’t think it is even close to worth a slot in this deck. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it makes a splash some­where, espe­cially with the “new design space” wiz­ards were aching to explore with the removal of manaburn.

Neme­sis Trap
Wow, is there any bet­ter way to answer Banes­layer Angel? Exile one for BB, and get your own tem­porar­ily to block and kill what­ever other crea­ture your oppo­nent may be attack­ing with. Def­i­nitely worth con­sid­er­ing for vam­pire side­boards, in the place cur­rently filled by Death­mark.

Smother
This card just answers so many ques­tions your oppo­nent can pose – Knight of the Reli­quary, Plated Geo­pede, Lotus Cobra, and Vam­pire Nighthawk to name a few. There are so many removal spells to choose from for black now, it will be dif­fi­cult to find the right mix.

Urge to Feed
One that will def­i­nitely claim a place though is this card. Name­less Inver­sion was always good enough in Lor­wyn stan­dard, and this is that again with a big upside. Not so good if you’re on the attack every turn, Urge to Feed is a fan­tas­tic way to turn the game around if you have a few block­ers but your oppo­nent is gain­ing the upper hand. Also keep in mind that your summoning-sickness affected crea­tures can be tapped for Urge to Feed which is bound to be rel­e­vant. Even if you can’t take advan­tage of its vampire-pumping bonus this is still an effi­cient, instant speed removal spell.

Gotta Heart Full of Black

Vam­pires has got­ten some great sup­port tools in World­wake and with the appar­ent death of Boros Bush­whacker it will almost cer­tainly be my choice for the next stan­dard FNM. Let me know in the com­ments what vam­pires you want to test out for stan­dard, block or casual con­structed, and if you have any vampire-related sto­ries from your prerelease!

Russell is a history student, avid gamer and MTG blogger from Perth, Western Australia who takes every chance he can get to sling some magical cards. Here he shares his occasional insights into the competitive and financial realms of Magic: the Gathering.

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