Conquerors of the new Standard is an Orzhov vampires deck capable of grinding out midrange or slower games and making aggressive plays to quickly pressure the opponent. This deck is designed to be able to be aggressive from the start, be defensive with good blocks and removal and shift back into aggression to finish the opponent off.
Current build of my Orzhov vampires deck on Arena. Modifications and upgrades are in progress as I acquire cards and wildcards, will update as the deck is changed.
OVERVIEW AND CREATURES
Conquerors of the new Standard is an Orzhov vampires deck primarily utilising vampire cards from Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan. I like to describe it as "fast midrange", meaning that while it is built to be able to win a midrange game or possibly even a slower game such as when up against a control or ramp deck, it is also capable of highly aggressive plays that can quickly pressure the opponent backed up by the removal typical to midrange. It is capable of building both wide and tall, with lords, token producers such as Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle and vampire reward cards such as Sanctum Seeker. Forerunner of the Legion is a key card to the deck, it allows us to tutor to top of library the exact card we need to be able to cast next turn, whether this is a Twilight Prophet when you can trigger Ascend or need a flyer, a Sanctum Seeker to push through damage or help you stabilise if you have a decent amount of vampires already out, a Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle to help you get more tokens, a Legion's Lieutenant to buff your team or even another Forerunner of the Legion to get another tutor and extra triggers of Forerunner of the Legion's second ability. Dusk Legion Zealot is a deceptively good card. For the mere cost of 1B and 1 life you get a fresh new card and a 1/1 vampire ready to help transform Legion's Landing, trigger Mavren Fein and Sanctum Seeker, count towards Ascend for Twilight Prophet and take buffs from Legion's Lieutenant and Forerunner of the Legion. If need be a Dusk Legion Zealot already on the battlefield is disposable. If it comes down to trading or chump blocking with a Dusk Legion Zealot or a Vampire token with lifelink, prioritise keeping the token around and losing the Dusk Legion Zealot. If possible, you want to conserve your creatures early in the game to suddenly swing with an army of buffed up creatures triggering Mavren Fein for an extra blocker (note: this also means an extra +1/+1 buff to one of your creatures if you have a Forerunner of the Legion out!) and Sanctum Seeker to quickly bring the opponent's life total down while topping yours up. Forerunner of the Legion buffs should be focused on creatures you want to attack with but want to ensure they don't die from blocks, on Twilight Prophets if your opponent has no flyers or on Vampire tokens with lifelink to gain more life. Paladin of Atonement is currently a filler card I am using until I can get some cards I want for the deck, though it has good synergy with the life you lose to Dusk Legion Zealot. Unfortunately, thanks to rotation we no longer have the synergy with the sacrifice for an effect pain land deserts, the old version of this deck before rotation had two Ifnir Deadlands and one Shefet Dunes.
NONCREATURE SPELLS
Most of the noncreature spells in this deck are removal. Cast Down and Seal Away are cheap, efficient and versatile answers to most creatures you may come up against. Vraska's Contempt has a higher CMC and slightly more restrictive casting cost, but it exiles, hits Planeswalkers as well as creatures and gives you two life. Legion's Landing is a cheap way to get a vampire creature token and even if the token dies can give you value later in the game. When Legion's Landing transforms it not only ramps you but it also gives you a repeatable mana sink to keep creating tokens, allowing you to keep building your forces even as you draw into land after land, for example.
MANABASE
As you should know by now, this deck is an Orzhov, or white and black, deck. In a tribal deck like this with no creatures outside of the one specific tribe and a majority of the nonland cards being creatures, Unclaimed Territory is fantastic. I would have of course been much happier if Cavern of Souls had been reprinted in standard, presuming that such a reprint would bring a playset down to a price I can afford for paper Magic, but that is a bit too much to expect and Unclaimed Territory is a perfectly adequate imitation that still serves the purpose being a guaranteed enters untapped nonbasic land that taps for both colours for my creatures, just sadly without the uncounterable clause. Anyway, the deck is running six Plains and and nine Swamp currently, but this number will likely be tweaked as changes are made to the spells in the deck. In addition, once Ravnica Allegiances brings us Orzhov we will be happily playing a full playset of Godless Shrine. In all, the deck has exactly 23 lands, plus the chance for a Legion's Landing to transform into Adanto, the First Fort.
SIDEBOARD
HELP PLEASE I am admittedly terrible with sideboards, both with making them and using them. Any suggestions for the sideboard would be greatly appreciated. HELP PLEASE
At the moment it consists of two different board wipes in the form of Ritual of Soot for hitting low curve decks and Cleansing Nova for the rest and if need be wiping the board of artifacts and enchantments, but do be careful if you have some of your opponent's creatures exiled under your Seal Aways, as the second mode of Cleansing Nova will destroy your Seal Aways and return the exiled cards to your opponent's battlefield. For fast aggro decks we also have three copies of Inspiring Cleric, a 2W 3/2 Vampire Cleric (gasp, shock, horror) that will gain you 4 life when it enters the battlefield, as it is a Vampire creature card we can even search it up with good old Forerunner of the Legion if we have to. The three copies of Sentinel Totem is of course in for the graveyard hate, though the low cost, no mana cost to activate and scry 1 when it enters the battlefield is also nice. Invoke the Divine is to help deal with any heavy artifact and/or enchantment decks we may encounter. Finally, we have four copies of Duress for control decks and other heavy noncreature decks.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Conquerors of the new Standard is a midrange Orzhov (white and black) vampire tribal deck that is also capable of faster, more aggressive starts. Efficient removal backs vampire creatures that tutor for more vampires, grow each other, create more vampires as tokens, drain your opponent for each vampire you attack with or allow you to draw an additional card each turn and drain your opponent for the converted mana cost (CMC) of the drawn card. This is currently a Magic Arena deck hence some cards that would or could improve the deck are not yet in, this deck list will be constantly updated as I acquire new cards. Thank you for reading, any help and +1 upvotes would be greatly appreciated, and I also have plenty of other decks on this site if you're somehow interested in delving into my strange deck building!
