Building with Box-Tops #2: Modern Rakdos Vampires

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HolyFalcon

1 September 2015

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Welcome to Building with Box-Tops (thanks for the name tooTimid!), written by me, Magicrafter. In this mini-series we're going to be exploring budget standard decks and the occasional budget modern deck. For the purposes of this series I am taking a budget build to be less than $75 for standard and under $150 for modern including a sideboard. These values are still experimental, so please vote here if you would like to see the modern budget change, or here if you would like to see the standard budget change.

Today we are exploring a modern deck that all you tribal lovers will love! And that deck will be...

RAKDOS VAMPIRES!!!

This deck is an aggro deck at its heart, but also turns into a midrange deck when needed due to a few strong lategame options. Let's break down the deck a bit more, shall we?

The Deck

Early Game

This deck wants to hit hard early, and has a large variety of options with which it can do this. Vampire Lacerator, Bloodghast, and Bump in the Night all provide solid damage directed at the opponent, whilst Lightning Bolt and Terminate grant early game control options. Both Kalastria Highborn and Blood Artist provide us with attrition engines if we're going into a long, grindy game, as they provide repeatable advantages as creatures die. Neither provide immediate impact but come into their own if allowed to survive as kill spells cut down your other creatures. Gatekeeper of Malakir is a fantastically flexible creature, giving us a 2/2 body early in the game if we're going for a beatdown plan, or a decent body with forced sacrifice in the mid-game if we're going for a more controlling plan.

Mid Game

Moving into the mid-game, around turns 3 and 4, we have Captivating Vampire and Stromkirk Captain as lords, granting us appreciable stat gains as well as interesting abilities. Vampire Nighthawk also shines in this deck, getting back life and acting as a threat on board. Deathtouch is a really nice ability to threaten decks that try to ramp into huge creatures like Primeval Titan. Finally, moving onto turn 4, the deck relies on final threats such as Bloodline Keeper  ^Flip, Olivia Voldaren, and Vampire Nocturnus to push through the last bits of damage. Note that both Bloodline Keeper  ^Flip and Olivia Voldaren can make quick work of opponents due to them having flying.

In case of a loss in tempo Sign in Blood restocks our hand with threats, but it is also worth remembering that it can be used to damage opponents, in very close games.

Late Game

A singleton Anowon, the Ruin Sage is included as it denies creatures to our opponent every turn. This source of removal is a key way to ensure that opponents who have held on thus far start to run out of resources. In a similar fashion, Olivia Voldaren's ability thrives in later turns, allowing you to not only remove opposing creatures, but put them under your own control.

However, vampires doesn't like the late game too much as the deck does suffer from a lack of efficient removal due to it being creature heavy. This makes it hard to get rid of opposing threats that your creatures may be unable to handle. It also lacks enough variety in truly impressive 5+ mana creatures to really shine itself, and it also lacks a fast insta-win combo like Splinter Twin decks. Having said this, simple factors like a surviving Vampire Nocturnus can be enough to ensure that the opponent goes down. It's not particularly fancy, but it does get the job done.

Sideboard Explained

Ok, I know I'm not an expert on sideboards, but this is what I thought would be helpful:

Rakdos Charm stops Twin from dealing lethal damage to us, making all of their Pestermites and Deceiver Exarchs deal 1 damage to themselves. It can be used alongside Terminate to disrupt the combo. However it is worth remembering that twin players mainly combo off with enough mana spare for a counterspell and thus Rakdos Charm must be used with extreme caution. This strategy is an insta-win against less experienced twin players but rarely catches out a seasoned player.

Stromkirk Noble is included for guaranteed hits against a Human tribal deck that may or may not be done in a future article, and is also relevant against slower control decks. Our strategy against control is to side out a lot of our 4 mana options and side in a lot of our 1 mana options to ensure we can play threats more quickly than they can play counterspells or removal spells.

Shadow Alley Denizen provides guaranteed damage against decks that are light on artifacts or black. It's a similar idea to Spreading Seas with Master of the Pearl Trident in Merfolk decks; a solid way to push through damage despite capable blockers.

Vampire Hexmage kills any strategy involving Planeswalkers (I'm looking at you Liliana of the Veil!) or +1/+1 counters. Most useful against Jund or Abzan where it is essentially a 2 mana 'kill target planeswalker' spell.

The extra Vampire Nocturnus can be brought in against midrange decks to increase our late game capabilities. The buff, combined with flying is enough to challenge threats like Tarmogoyf and give us the option to fly over them if we want to keep the aggression up.

Finally, Viscera Seer is included as a combo option to be paired with Blood Artist, Kalastria Highborn, and Bloodghast. This slow attrition engine provides us with a way to sacrifice our creatures in order to scry, ping damage at the opponent, gain some life, and then (in the case of Bloodghast) return the creature to the field next turn.

Hands

Ok, this is where we draw up some hands and explain them, while also deciding if they are a good hand to keep.

Hand One: Swamp, Swamp, Dragonskull Summit, Olivia Voldaren, Sign in Blood, Bloodline Keeper  ^Flip, and Bump in the Night. We have both of our colors here, as well as an okay curve, assuming we draw into anything with a converted mana cost of three. This hand thrives more towards the late game, but that's okay if we play our hand right and get some good draws. The top card of our library was a Bloodghast, so we would've been in good shape.

Hand Two: Swamp, Stromkirk Captain, Lightning Bolt, Mountain, Mountain, Vampire Nighthawk, and Bloodghast. I'm not sure on keeping this. We have a very nice curve, but not double black. We could keep it and hope for black mana while destroying their threats with Lightning Bolt, or mulligan for a shot at a better hand. This hand goes either way, so I think I would leave this one up to you feeling lucky or not. The top card of our library was a Swamp, so we would've been okay.

Hand Three: Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Sign in Blood, and Terminate. This hand is okay, kind of like that last one. We have a draw spell to dig for more threats and get a red mana source, plus two creatures that can remove the opponent's creatures. I wouldn't be too keen on keeping this hand, so personally I would mulligan. We have a Swamp on top of our library, so if you kept it, hopefully your Sign in Blood does you some good.

What if I have a larger budget?

Well, glad you asked. You can start with adding one more Bloodghast for one of the Captivating Vampire, and take out the last Captivating Vampire for an Olivia Voldaren, and from there - go wild. You can test out Liliana of the Veil as a three or four of, and maybe some amount of Kolaghan's Command in the 75. It would also be important to fix up the manabase with Blood Crypt and Bloodstained Mire. This isn't going to be a super-competitive deck that can win a Grand Prix, but it might take down an FNM. If you want a more competitive deck that is similar to this one, I suggest you check out Mono-Black Aggro.

Conclusion

Well, that's it for today on Building with Box-Tops. Please leave a suggestion for a deck you'd like to see, and don't forget to vote on the budget for these decks in the introduction! I'd also be interested to hear any comments you might have! See you guys next time!

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