While people are figuring out how to use their new Scars cards, and/or building decks and acquiring all the cards they need, I am running this. Nothing fancy, just consistent pressure with the capacity to swing for a bunch and life drain/gain when people play removal. This deck is only Zen block and M11. Seems fairly resilient to most of the strategies being proposed. Should get a lot of wins during the next month until the format settles down.
Worth noting for those of you who did not play much M11 limited, that Bloodthrone Vampire and Mitotic Slime allow you to swing for 15 the turn the slime is played (sac the slime and each of his tokens to the vampire). You rarely want to do this unless they are tapped out and don't have a blocker, but making the vampire a 5/5 or 7/7 with the slime is common. It is worth pointing out that in the new format their is very little instant speed removal that is relevant so this "combo" is relatively safe when played wisely. With the fetches you can sac, resurrect and sac again a Bloodghast for pumps, and if Pawn of Ulamog is in play you can get lots of extra pumps, mana, or scrys out of your creatures thanks to the eldrazi tokens. Lots of interactions to keep in mind.
I should also point out that, though the deck looks like its only goal is to overextend and beat, if you resolve a Highborn it is often the right play to hold back leaving your mana available for life drain/gain ability. This ability can work like a Consume Spirit with the Bloodthrone or Visera Seer in play.
Unless you have a strong reason to play them out, holding a visera seer or vampire lacerator in hand is often also smart. When you draw a Captivating Vampire, having a few cheep other vampires in hand allows you to cast multiple creatures and to activate captivating vampires creature steal effect before your opponent can do much about it.
Those are some of the things I think about when playing this. There are a lot of interactions to keep track of, which makes it a bit tough to play but opponents miss far more, leading to lots of "where did that come from" wins. This was true a few weeks ago and will likely be even more so while people are figuring out their new decks.
Hope you folks like this build. Comments welcome.
