Vampire Tribal
This deck is designed to be fun around the kitchen table.
Why would anyone build a Mono- Vampire Deck in Modern?
Well, you're right. There are options that are "spicier", more competetive or even more fun. A lot of them.
But: When I got back into MTG after years, I had no real functioning Deck except a (not gonna lie) awful mono- Vampire Deck. I played a few games with friends. We had a lot of fun, but the deck was bad. Really bad. Preconstructed-planeswalker-deck kind of bad.
I got home and started browsing the big, bad Internet. Reading a lot, watching MTG youtube videos.
Fast forward a few month, I have several (semi) competetive decks and even more that are just build for fun (check my profile for details). I had never touched my shitty Vampire Deck. Although it had a few kinda valuable cards (Bloodghast I never disassembled and sold it either.
Why you ask me? - Because was "my color" of choice when I first started out playing Magic. I was beeing sentimental about this weird ass deck that wasn't even much fun playing. And I still am.
And that's why I decided to throw some money at it and make it fun playing again.
I wanted to keep the "idea" of the original Deck intact. If you could call it that...
My biggest creatures where making other players sac creatures: Anowon, the Ruin Sage and Butcher of Malakir and there was loads of removal in the deck (Doom Blade, Terror). I decided to keep at least some of this in the deck. I did not want to end up with a different deck in the end. I also decided to stick with the vampires as well as beeing mono-.
What is this Deck?
I thought about what vampires are good at. Paired it with my above mentioned plan and could not make it work at first. But some tinkering later I got it to somehow work. It became a creature heavy deck, caring about value and utility.
Early Game:
At first this deck plays like any aggro Deck. Spew out your hand and get some early damage in.- Guul Draz Assassin, Gifted Aetherborn, Bloodghast and Asylum Visitor are the cards we want- The Deck relys on having a "minimum" amount of vampires on the table at any given time, don't be afraid to attack, but do not be too reckless either, you may need your creatures mid-game- Use removal if needed
Mid Game:
I hope you are hitting your land drops, here comes some major threats. We are trying to slow down the game a bit now. keep your creature back as blockers and continue building the board for:- Captivating Vampire and Bloodline Keeper
. If you have enough Vampires on the board, these guys are quite intimidating- Vampire Nocturnus is another powerfull lord to get you an advantage (Tip: use Evolving Wilds to shuffle away lands, as those are colorless)- Make use of your Gatekeeper of Malakir (NEVER play them without kicker, a card:Grizzly Bear|Bear is not good enough)- by now you should be able to user Feast of Blood to get rid of stuff as well as stabilize
Late Game:
We tried to slow down the game, so we are probably looking at a quite impressive board all around the table. Maybee noone is attacking, because that would open him/ her up for a attack. Great, this is where the deck want's to be.- Bring out Anowon, the Ruin Sage- Use your lords
abilities to tip the scale in your favour
Does it work?
Well, yeas and no.
If you manage to make it to the mid game with an OK Board, you probably can make use of the big lords. What really get's this deck is board wipes. Bloodghast really helps with meeting requirements even through a lot of removal, but once the board is empty and your hand is not too full, it becomes hard to recover.
Conclusion
The Deck is not competetive at FNM with how susceptible it is to board wipes and other stuff. But it was never designed to be. In a multiplayer scenario it most often has the time to build the board state you need. And it is most powerfull in longer, balanced matchups, while still beeing "fair"
And that is, what I built it for: Maybee it is not competetive, but it is Fun around the kitchen table.
