Hey guys! I've finally decided to delve into the modern format and push away from the quickly changing Standard format. With this first step I decided to build a rouge brew, nothing like the decks I've heard about or seen, so I decided to build a Vampire tribal deck. I came up with the idea after looking at a card database app on my phone, finding some cool Vampire cards such as Vampire Nocturnus and Olivia Voldaren . So, enough about how this deck came about, how does it work?
Well, the deck works as follows:
- Turn 1: Thoughtseize or
Vampire Lacerator
.
- Turn 2: Bloodghast or wait until they play a creature, Terminate or Lightning Bolt if you have it in hand. We're Rakdos, life won't be an issue if you play your cards right. Otherwise, play
Kalastria Highborn
to start the combo with Ghast.
- Turn 3: if you held on to Bolt or Terminate, you can use Gatekeeper of Malakir to make them sack a creature. Obviously this works best if they only have one creature, but it's a great card for removal if it' the case. The second play that you could do is Stromkirk Captain , or Captain Kirk, which gives our other Vampires +1/+1 and first strike, while having first strike itself. A great card to play this turn even before attacks. Another card that could be played is Vampire Nighthawk , mainly towards the end of the turn. Instant threat.
- Turn 4: This is where things get interesting. If your opponent gets unlucky draws or you get extremely lucky, this is the point that you could play Vampire Nocturnus . This card is the reason why we are running all black sources with the exception of Lightning Bolt . We can't run red without running Bolt, it's a great card NOT to run. But anyways, Noct give all Vampires, including itself, +2/+1 AND flying if the top card of your library is black. A great card for the tribal theme. Or, you could play Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet! The most recent card printed, and it's a powerhouse alright! With Kirk out, it's essentially a Legendary Siege Rhino.
- Turn 5: If you have all the pieces you need, keep attacking or putting on the pressure.
Other than that, that's how this deck functions given the right setting or situation. And with the current match-ups, there are some that are honestly 'grindy' at times. The match-ups that work well with this deck in this current meta are: Affinity (because of the K-Commands and the Shatterstorm), Control, Zoo, and Tokens (as far as I know). The decks that are a really bad match-up are Burn, Tron, and the new Hyper Aggro Eldrazi. But, with the new Eldrazi decks I haven't tested it against them, so I'm only assuming that it will be a bad match. Elves and Storm are also a bad match for us as well.
Cards that I considered for the deck were
Pulse Tracker
,
Stromkirk Noble
, Viscera Seer , Captivating Vampire , and Falkenrath Aristocrat . Pulse, Noble, and Seer had to be dropped because they just could match the sheer power of Lacerator. A two power one drop? Yes, please. And because there are so many good three drop Vampires out there, Captivating had to be cast aside in favor of Captain Kirk and Nighthawk. Captivate also has the problem of being too slow with its '5 vampire' abilities, and in this format, could mean death. And finally, Falk just didn't really fit the overall theme--despite being a vampire itself--so she didn't really see play in testing. Plus, Kalitas seems a whole lot better.
So what are your thoughts on the deck? Any changes that you would make to make it even better? Post a comment down below! Thanks for Reading!
