Magic the Gathering

Constructed

Can Vampires Compete in the Current Standard?

By Jeremy Class ⋅ November 18, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

The Vam­pire deck has been hyped ever since the spoil­ers for Zendikar were released. It is easy to see why since the deck finally estab­lishes vam­pires as a coher­ent tribe by giv­ing play­ers quick and effi­cient crea­tures. Yet, is the deck com­pet­i­tive enough to stand up against Jund, mono-red, or any con­trol deck? In my opin­ion, the answer is no. The vam­pire deck has a good curve and a good crea­ture, but it lacks the ver­sa­til­ity, dis­rup­tion, and the abil­ity to cre­ate card advan­tage that other decks offer. Addi­tion­ally, the vam­pire tribe tends to have a dif­fi­cult time against sweep­ers like Vol­canic Fall­out or Jund Charm because of their lack­lus­ter tough­ness. All of this com­bined with a sit­u­a­tional lord in Vam­pire Noc­tur­nus means that the vam­pire deck looks flashy, but just can­not com­pete in the cur­rent metagame. Even so, Vam­pires remain a pop­u­lar deck choice. With the releases of each new set, the vam­pire tribe may very well become the best deck in stan­dard. I will ana­lyze the prob­lems of the vam­pire deck and dis­cuss the cards it needs to become more effi­cient. An exam­ple of what a stan­dard legal and com­pet­i­tive vam­pire deck looks like is listed at the end of the article.

When you take a look at the vam­pire deck you might notice that it suf­fers from iden­tity con­fu­sion. It des­per­ately wants to be an agro deck, but it is bet­ter geared towards being a midrange deck because of cards like Malakir Blood­witch, Vam­pire Noc­tur­nus, Mind Sludge, Sorin Markov, and Ten­drils of Cor­rup­tion. Yet, the deck also runs cards like Vam­pire Lac­er­a­tor and Blood­ghast which pro­motes win­ning as quickly as pos­si­ble. This is a con­tra­dic­tion. If the goal of a vam­pire deck is to drop the opponent’s life to ten or below as quickly as pos­si­ble, then run­ning a bunch of cards with a con­verted mana cost of four or greater will slow the deck down sig­nif­i­cantly. I would not want to run vam­pires with­out using a full play set of Vam­pire Noc­tur­nus and a cou­ple of Malakir Blood­witch for the sim­ple fact that these cards offer a huge incen­tive for run­ning the tribe. Of course, I would never think to remove Vam­pire Lac­er­a­tor or Blood­ghast either. Also, I can­not under­stand why Ten­drils of Cor­rup­tion is so heav­ily favored over the cheaper Doom Blade or why Sorin Markov sees play over Lil­lianna Vess.

The vam­pire deck also suf­fers from an inabil­ity to cre­ate as much card advan­tage and board advan­tage as other decks. The only cards that sup­ply hand advan­tage are Sign in Blood and Mind Sludge. Sign in Blood is a good card, but the vam­pire deck already has to sac­ri­fice a large amount of life for Vam­pire Lac­er­a­tor and the fetch lands. Mind Sludge is extremely use­ful against combo decks and con­trol decks not play­ing Swerve, but is sim­ply much less effec­tive against other aggro decks. In terms of cre­at­ing card advan­tage, Jund is far out in front with Blight­ning and Jund Charm.

The vam­pire deck does have an excel­lent abil­ity to con­trol crea­tures. Gate­keeper of Malakir, Dis­fig­ure, Ten­drils of Cor­rup­tion, and Vam­pire Nighthawk will keep your opponent’s crea­tures in check. Marsh Casu­al­ties can also be brought out of the side­board to sweep when needed. How­ever, once again, Jund pro­vides greater board pres­ence with Sprout­ing Thri­nax, Brood­mate Dragon, and Cas­cade cards. Even the new gob­lin deck that is pop­ping up can cre­ate mas­sive board advan­tage with War­ren Insti­ga­tor and Siege-gang Com­man­der. Also, black strug­gles to deal with arti­facts and enchant­ments which could be a seri­ous prob­lem. Fur­ther­more, vam­pires can be eas­ily swept by a sim­ple Pyro­clasm. Blood­ghast can recur, but you are still left with a 2/1 with the inabil­ity to block and sit­u­a­tional haste. Vam­pire Noc­tur­nus can usu­ally sur­vive a sweep and will pre­vent your other vam­pires from falling prey to a sweep, but only when its abil­ity is active. Oth­er­wise, it will fall to a sim­ple Light­ning Bolt.

Another prob­lem with the vam­pire deck is its inabil­ity to splash for another color. This gives it a lack of ver­sa­til­ity that other decks have. I have seen vam­pire decks try to splash red or green to try to fix this prob­lem, but this is dif­fi­cult because cards in a vam­pire deck force a heavy black com­mit­ment. Most vam­pire cards have two or three black mana sym­bols in their cast­ing cost and vam­pire Noc­tur­nus needs black cards on the top of the deck. Also, run­ning any­thing other than Swamps reduces the potency of Ten­drils of Cor­rup­tion and Mind Sludge. The vam­pire deck sim­ply does not offer the kind of options that a sim­ple Jund Charm does. This makes it pre­dictable and easy to handle.

The vam­pire deck does have poten­tial and I am sure that World­wake will pro­vide the deck with much more options. Vam­pires really only need a cou­ple of more cards and options to be truly com­pet­i­tive. Reprint­ing Bad Moon would def­i­nitely put vam­pires over the top, but that card will never be reprinted because uni­ver­sal crea­ture pump is a white abil­ity now. I would set­tle for a more con­sis­tent lord in the two drop or three drop slot, but I doubt that the vam­pire deck will get mul­ti­ple lords so soon.

It would be nice to see Dash Hopes or a sim­i­lar card that coun­ters spells unless your oppo­nent pays life. This would fit well into with the vampire’s theme of reduc­ing your opponent’s life as quickly as pos­si­ble while also adding some much needed con­trol to the deck. A black counter spell would also offer a black deck an answer to arti­facts and enchantments.

How­ever, what a vam­pire deck really needs is a pow­er­ful way to accel­er­ate mana. There is no chance that Dark Rit­ual will get reprinted, but per­haps a card like Cabal Cof­fers could bridge the gap between the early game and the midgame. Crypt of Agadeem is a pos­si­ble option, but I do not like the fact that its abil­ity is based on the num­ber of crea­tures in your grave­yard. It is way eas­ier to hit land drops, espe­cially in a set with a land­fall mechanic.

If Vam­pire decks receive some of the above sup­port then they very well could become the deck to beat. This is cer­tainly pos­si­ble once Jund decks rotate out of stan­dard. Only time will tell if these crea­tures of the night will cast a large enough shadow on the metagame to make a seri­ous impact. Now here is an exam­ple of a com­pet­i­tive vam­pire deck in the cur­rent stan­dard environment: