The goal of the deck is beating faces up with an army of buffed vampires as early as possible giving no quarter to anyone.
Card Selection
This deck needs a lot of card draw
We will be casting low cmc spells every turn, ideally we will want this thing to happen
Turn 1 - Land + 1 vamp and a token Turn 2 - Land + 2 vamps + 2 tokens and 2dmg to one opponent Turn 3 - Land + Shared Animosity+ 30 damage to the opponent (wich can be lethal)
In this scenario a T4 boardwipe will likely happen and we will need to rebuild as fast as we can, so we need cheap card draw, this is my top selection and why
Cheap draw
Night's Whisper, Sign in Blood: cheap early card draw, after a T4 boardwipe we can (if lucky) resolve sign in blood and get 2-4 bodies i the table again to continue the pressure
Dusk Legion Zealot: for 2 mana puts 2 bodies o the table and replaces itself, not our best spell but cool enought to deserve the spot
Middle cost draw
Read the Bones: The scry 2 is very powerfull, card selection + card draw worths that extra 1cmc
Necropotence: Just nuts, being able to refill your hand every turn at cost of life is great
Phyrexian Arena: Most people dislike it because it takes 2 turns to match the effect of a sign in blood and cost an extra mana, but if it sticks, the value is exponential
Erebos, God of the Dead: this is a Greed on a stick, is true that the ability costs 1 extra mana but he is a 5/7 indestructible beater while active and the ability of stopping opponents to gain life is not to be dimissed
Champion of Dusk: he is a 4/4 for 5 that in the worst case scenario gives us 2 cards, so for 5, we get a fattie, a token and 2 cards.
This is a very proactive deck, so we dont have a lot of tools to interact with our opponents stuff, have selected this toolkit
Single target creature removal
Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares: Exile is way better than destroy, the downsides of the spells are insignificant for EDH
Single target versatile removal
Anguished Unmaking: Exiles target everything but lands for just 3 mana and 3 life
Utter End: Pretty much like anguished but 1cmc more and no life loss
Both removals are silver bullets, they can get rid of almost anything that annoy us for good at instant speed
Multi target/mass removal
Merciless Eviction: is our all star multi target removal, is wrath that exiles creatures or, enchantments, or artifacts or even Planeswalkers so is a keypiece and the king of versatility in this removal toolkit
Return to Dust: sometimes we need to remove some artifacts and/or enchants, this card allos us to do it at instant speed choosing one artifact or enchant, or we can use it at sorcery speed and get rid of up to two enchants or artifacts, again, the keyword is versatility, we prefer cards that gives us choices overall even if the cmc is higer than others
Vandalblast: this is quite a punch in the neck for our opponents if resolved at the right time
Creature removal on creatures
We play a couple removals on a stick, they are not great but they can do the job when needed
Captivating Vampire: for 3 he is a lord and if we tap 5 untapped vampires we can steal forever another creature of our opponent control even if captivating dies, so it is pretty good
Patron of the Vein: he costs 6 mana, but he is a 4/4 flier that when ETB destroys another creature our opponents control, and reads that every creature destroyed dor our opponents is exiled instead (remember exile>destroy), and for each creature destoyed he give every vampire +1+1.
Ramp/mana rocks
Having ramp is always good, our deck has low cmc so we do not really need hard ramp, but there are some rocks worths the slot
Sol Ring: Nothing to say, just a great rock, in this deck though unless I also have a signet or something I probably would prefet T1 vampire rather than T1 sol ring
Cabal Coffers: Because this build is really black and I also run Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, the coffers allows us for a rerally good ramp most of the time
Lands are powerfull resources, we dont run too many utility lands but someones are required
Bojuka Bog: Exiling a graveyard is always good against certain matchups
Homeward Path: Nothing others more to a creature based deck that people stealing our stuff, play your own dudes man!! well, with this lands we can retrieve our crew back when needed
Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, we are nbot specially greedy on mana, but we do have some fun interactions that needs that extra mile this two cards can give us (we will talk about those in the wincons section)
Vault of the Archangel: The ability is kind of expensive to use (5 mana) but in the irght situation is nuts an army of deathtouch lifelinkers are a serious deal
Cavern of Souls: We have a lot of dudes, so we should mind too much about people countering them, but they do, so we can use this to be able to rsolve our stuff
Path of Ancestry: more than 1/2 of our non land cards are creatures, so we will be using the scry 1 a lot, ths land gives us the color we need and card selection in the same card, really good for tribal decks
Shennanigans and sinergies
Land Tax + Scroll Rack
The "combo" (is actually more a strong synergy rather than a combo) is this: 1. You have Land Tax in play along Scroll Rack
2. You fetch 3 basic lands in your upkeep 3. Activate Scroll Rack separating those 3 lands, so you draw 3 cards and put those lands on top of your library 4. As long as one of your opponents still have more lands than you you will repeat the process of drawing 4 cards a turn
The coolest thing about this "combo" is that the cards are strong enough on their own, so if you don't get both cards in play but one, then you can actually make a good use of it anyway
I have to confess I just love Land tax on its own, If you have one white source in your hand, land tax and 5 other spells you are good to go (kind of).
We are playing an aggro deck, so we win by beating faces and for that we need dudes and combat phases, because one combat phase is not enough sometimes to kill our prey even if its wounded we have this tools
Aggravated Assault: It cos us 3 to cast and 5 to use it at sorcery speed, but mid/late game we can get really nasty with it
We could also use Relentless Assault or World at war which are great cards on their own, I just have not found a place in this deck for it, but it may work for you
We love our crew, but we must be realistic, other people (our opponents) may not love our dudes like we do, so they may attempt to wipe the board from time to time.
Edgar precon came with the super awesome Teferi's Protection so I will assume you are playing and don't need an explanation for it, but is not the only tool we can use.
Boros Charm: We have this here mainly for the choice of "indestructible" but sometimes the other options are great, giving double strike to a very buffed Bloodcrazed Paladin is endgame or 4 damage to a player or PW are great situational options too.
Reconnaissance: Imagine this scenario, you attack with 5 creatures, 2 of them are blocked, you can remove those 2 and untap them to avoid damage.
But, if every creature you send connects, is even better, because creatures are considered "attackers" until EOT, so after the damage is dealt you can use this card ability and get all your creatures untapped, ready to protect his lord
Extra Candies
If we get to mid/late game and nobody have died we are failing our task.
Also we may get controlled, or something, but normally, at MID/LATE our opponents should be at very low life and this is where we got his presents
Exsanguinate: this card is better if you can generate infinite mana, which we can't , but we can make a pretty good use for it, imagine turn 10 with Cabal Coffers, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and 7 random lands and zero mana rocks. you activate the coffers and get 10 mana, then you have 7 extra to use, so 17 mana means 15 damage each and 45 life gain for you, that should be enough to kill at least one opponent and put us to the top of the food chain once more.
Torment of Hailfire This is my favorite, imagine the same scenario that last card, so we have those 17 manas at T10, if we can resolve this, then is game over for most people.
Torment for 15 (15+2) means every player needs to pay 45 life or sacrifice 15 non land permanents or discard 15 cards or any combination of those they can.
In all these situations we are talking about T10 with no mana rocks, but the things can get really nasty of we do better and later.
Because of these 2 cards I am thinking adding Pyroblast or Red Elemental Blast, wich is perfect for the counter war, but because blue has Cyclonic Rift, Evacuation and stuff like that, we may use this in those situations too
With 20 of our 29 creatures costing 1-3 manas (11 of which costs 1-2), it is not unrealistic or far fetched to have 4-6 bodies by turn 3
And if instead of the Lord, we played 2 1cmc vampires, then the damage would be 7+5+5+5+5+5+5 = 32 damage so our first victim ended up at 3 life total, just one hit of any creature and we can pick our other victim.
We are talking about an attack we can make at T3 so a board wipe is nor expected until T4-T5
Buffy the vampire buffer
Buffing our dudes is a good thing, and buffing them for cheap is way better, we play some lords such as
I have added all the "valuable" cheap lords the only high cmc lords are just the broken ones such as Bloodline Keeper
Buffing our people with trinkets and magic
I am not going to talk about why I added Umezawa's Jitte in the deck, we are past that, I am going to talk about artifacts and enchants which are here to give our people the edge in the combat.
Stensia Masquerade, our dudes have 1st strike on attack and if they connect they get +1+1
Vanquisher's Banner an anthem effect with card draw attached to it, it worth the 5 cmc it has
Sword of Light and Shadow: Protection from the hard removal and +2+2, the life gain on connect is not bad but the ability to return a creature card from my gy to my hand just takes the blood cake
The actual decklist (the updatet version is i my signature)
I hate that you have your decklist alphabetical, as opposed to cards broken down by card type. I’m also unable to view your signature updated decklist on my phone.
As you said, this deck can go for lethal turn 3 with 3 one-drop vampires and shared animosity, yet you run so few one-drops. ISBpathfinder runs 16 but I run all 17. I think Edgar wants to go aggro as both of his abilities are best for that. Therefore, I’d recommend cutting a lot of your ramp, mana sinks, and cards that cost 3 or more mana. Here are my recommendations:
This is a full aggro vampire tribal decklist
The goal of the deck is beating faces up with an army of buffed vampires as early as possible giving no quarter to anyone.
Card Selection
This deck needs a lot of card draw
We will be casting low cmc spells every turn, ideally we will want this thing to happen
Turn 1 - Land + 1 vamp and a token Turn 2 - Land + 2 vamps + 2 tokens and 2dmg to one opponent Turn 3 - Land + Shared Animosity+ 30 damage to the opponent (wich can be lethal)
In this scenario a T4 boardwipe will likely happen and we will need to rebuild as fast as we can, so we need cheap card draw, this is my top selection and why
Cheap draw
Night's Whisper, Sign in Blood: cheap early card draw, after a T4 boardwipe we can (if lucky) resolve sign in blood and get 2-4 bodies i the table again to continue the pressure
Skullclamp: is just nuts
Dusk Legion Zealot: for 2 mana puts 2 bodies o the table and replaces itself, not our best spell but cool enought to deserve the spot
Middle cost draw
Read the Bones: The scry 2 is very powerfull, card selection + card draw worths that extra 1cmc
Necropotence: Just nuts, being able to refill your hand every turn at cost of life is great
Phyrexian Arena: Most people dislike it because it takes 2 turns to match the effect of a sign in blood and cost an extra mana, but if it sticks, the value is exponential
Erebos, God of the Dead: this is a Greed on a stick, is true that the ability costs 1 extra mana but he is a 5/7 indestructible beater while active and the ability of stopping opponents to gain life is not to be dimissed
Champion of Dusk: he is a 4/4 for 5 that in the worst case scenario gives us 2 cards, so for 5, we get a fattie, a token and 2 cards.
This is a very proactive deck, so we dont have a lot of tools to interact with our opponents stuff, have selected this toolkit
Single target creature removal
Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares: Exile is way better than destroy, the downsides of the spells are insignificant for EDH
Single target versatile removal
Anguished Unmaking: Exiles target everything but lands for just 3 mana and 3 life
Utter End: Pretty much like anguished but 1cmc more and no life loss
Both removals are silver bullets, they can get rid of almost anything that annoy us for good at instant speed
Multi target/mass removal
Merciless Eviction: is our all star multi target removal, is wrath that exiles creatures or, enchantments, or artifacts or even Planeswalkers so is a keypiece and the king of versatility in this removal toolkit
Return to Dust: sometimes we need to remove some artifacts and/or enchants, this card allos us to do it at instant speed choosing one artifact or enchant, or we can use it at sorcery speed and get rid of up to two enchants or artifacts, again, the keyword is versatility, we prefer cards that gives us choices overall even if the cmc is higer than others
Vandalblast: this is quite a punch in the neck for our opponents if resolved at the right time
Creature removal on creatures
We play a couple removals on a stick, they are not great but they can do the job when needed
Captivating Vampire: for 3 he is a lord and if we tap 5 untapped vampires we can steal forever another creature of our opponent control even if captivating dies, so it is pretty good
Patron of the Vein: he costs 6 mana, but he is a 4/4 flier that when ETB destroys another creature our opponents control, and reads that every creature destroyed dor our opponents is exiled instead (remember exile>destroy), and for each creature destoyed he give every vampire +1+1.
Ramp/mana rocks
Having ramp is always good, our deck has low cmc so we do not really need hard ramp, but there are some rocks worths the slot
Sol Ring: Nothing to say, just a great rock, in this deck though unless I also have a signet or something I probably would prefet T1 vampire rather than T1 sol ring
Rakdos Signet , Orzhov Signet and Boros signet : Ramp+fixing
Ramp on lands
Cabal Coffers: Because this build is really black and I also run Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, the coffers allows us for a rerally good ramp most of the time
Lands are powerfull resources, we dont run too many utility lands but someones are required
Bojuka Bog: Exiling a graveyard is always good against certain matchups
Homeward Path: Nothing others more to a creature based deck that people stealing our stuff, play your own dudes man!! well, with this lands we can retrieve our crew back when needed
Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, we are nbot specially greedy on mana, but we do have some fun interactions that needs that extra mile this two cards can give us (we will talk about those in the wincons section)
Vault of the Archangel: The ability is kind of expensive to use (5 mana) but in the irght situation is nuts an army of deathtouch lifelinkers are a serious deal
Cavern of Souls: We have a lot of dudes, so we should mind too much about people countering them, but they do, so we can use this to be able to rsolve our stuff
Path of Ancestry: more than 1/2 of our non land cards are creatures, so we will be using the scry 1 a lot, ths land gives us the color we need and card selection in the same card, really good for tribal decks
Shennanigans and sinergies
Land Tax + Scroll Rack
The "combo" (is actually more a strong synergy rather than a combo) is this: 1. You have Land Tax in play along Scroll Rack
2. You fetch 3 basic lands in your upkeep 3. Activate Scroll Rack separating those 3 lands, so you draw 3 cards and put those lands on top of your library 4. As long as one of your opponents still have more lands than you you will repeat the process of drawing 4 cards a turn
The coolest thing about this "combo" is that the cards are strong enough on their own, so if you don't get both cards in play but one, then you can actually make a good use of it anyway
I have to confess I just love Land tax on its own, If you have one white source in your hand, land tax and 5 other spells you are good to go (kind of).
We are playing an aggro deck, so we win by beating faces and for that we need dudes and combat phases, because one combat phase is not enough sometimes to kill our prey even if its wounded we have this tools
Aggravated Assault: It cos us 3 to cast and 5 to use it at sorcery speed, but mid/late game we can get really nasty with it
We could also use Relentless Assault or World at war which are great cards on their own, I just have not found a place in this deck for it, but it may work for you
We love our crew, but we must be realistic, other people (our opponents) may not love our dudes like we do, so they may attempt to wipe the board from time to time.
Edgar precon came with the super awesome Teferi's Protection so I will assume you are playing and don't need an explanation for it, but is not the only tool we can use.
Boros Charm: We have this here mainly for the choice of "indestructible" but sometimes the other options are great, giving double strike to a very buffed Bloodcrazed Paladin is endgame or 4 damage to a player or PW are great situational options too.
Reconnaissance: Imagine this scenario, you attack with 5 creatures, 2 of them are blocked, you can remove those 2 and untap them to avoid damage.
But, if every creature you send connects, is even better, because creatures are considered "attackers" until EOT, so after the damage is dealt you can use this card ability and get all your creatures untapped, ready to protect his lord
Extra Candies
If we get to mid/late game and nobody have died we are failing our task.
Also we may get controlled, or something, but normally, at MID/LATE our opponents should be at very low life and this is where we got his presents
Exsanguinate: this card is better if you can generate infinite mana, which we can't , but we can make a pretty good use for it, imagine turn 10 with Cabal Coffers, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and 7 random lands and zero mana rocks. you activate the coffers and get 10 mana, then you have 7 extra to use, so 17 mana means 15 damage each and 45 life gain for you, that should be enough to kill at least one opponent and put us to the top of the food chain once more.
Torment of Hailfire This is my favorite, imagine the same scenario that last card, so we have those 17 manas at T10, if we can resolve this, then is game over for most people.
Torment for 15 (15+2) means every player needs to pay 45 life or sacrifice 15 non land permanents or discard 15 cards or any combination of those they can.
In all these situations we are talking about T10 with no mana rocks, but the things can get really nasty of we do better and later.
Because of these 2 cards I am thinking adding Pyroblast or Red Elemental Blast, wich is perfect for the counter war, but because blue has Cyclonic Rift, Evacuation and stuff like that, we may use this in those situations too
With 20 of our 29 creatures costing 1-3 manas (11 of which costs 1-2), it is not unrealistic or far fetched to have 4-6 bodies by turn 3
Shared Animosity : Make our combat great again
Turn 1 - Blood Crypt + Falkenrath Gorger + Vampire token
Turn 2 - Plains + Legion Lieutenant + free Vampire token
Our first attack deals 5 damage to a player leaving him at 35 if he doesn't loss any life before
Turn 3 - Swamp + Shared Animosity
Our second attack deals 6+5+5+5 which means 21 damage getting that player at lethal range with 14 life total
And if instead of the Lord, we played 2 1cmc vampires, then the damage would be 7+5+5+5+5+5+5 = 32 damage so our first victim ended up at 3 life total, just one hit of any creature and we can pick our other victim.
We are talking about an attack we can make at T3 so a board wipe is nor expected until T4-T5
Buffy the vampire buffer
Buffing our dudes is a good thing, and buffing them for cheap is way better, we play some lords such as
Captivating Vampire, Legion Lieutenant, Drana, Liberator of Malakir (yes , she needs to connect for the buff but is worth it), Indulgent Aristocrat which transforms a 1/1 token in a permanent buff for our other vamps for just 2 manas, Metallic Mimic and a lot more, because our vampire lords are vampires they are never alone , they come with at least a 1/1 extra body to buff
I have added all the "valuable" cheap lords the only high cmc lords are just the broken ones such as Bloodline Keeper
Buffing our people with trinkets and magic
I am not going to talk about why I added Umezawa's Jitte in the deck, we are past that, I am going to talk about artifacts and enchants which are here to give our people the edge in the combat.
Stensia Masquerade, our dudes have 1st strike on attack and if they connect they get +1+1
Vanquisher's Banner an anthem effect with card draw attached to it, it worth the 5 cmc it has
Sword of Light and Shadow: Protection from the hard removal and +2+2, the life gain on connect is not bad but the ability to return a creature card from my gy to my hand just takes the blood cake
The actual decklist (the updatet version is i my signature)
1x Akoum Refuge
1x Anguished Unmaking
1x Arid Mesa
1x Blackcleave Cliffs
1x Blade of the Bloodchief
1x Blood Artist
1x Blood Crypt
1x Bloodcrazed Paladin
1x Bloodline Keeper
1x Bloodline Necromancer
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Boros Charm
1x Boros Signet
1x Cabal Coffers
1x Captivating Vampire
1x Cavern of Souls
1x Caves of Koilos
1x Champion of Dusk
1x City of Brass
1x Clifftop Retreat
1x Command Tower
1x Dark Impostor
1x Dark Prophecy
1x Dragonskull Summit
1x Drana, Liberator of Malakir
1x Dusk Legion Zealot
1x Edgar Markov
1x Erebos, God of the Dead
1x Expedition Map
1x Exsanguinate
1x Falkenrath Gorger
1x Forerunner of the Legion
1x Gifted Aetherborn
1x Herald's Horn
1x Homeward Path
1x Indulgent Aristocrat
1x Kalastria Highborn
1x Land Tax
1x Legion Lieutenant
1x Malakir Bloodwitch
1x Merciless Eviction
1x Metallic Mimic
1x Mirror Entity
1x Mountain
1x Necropotence
1x Night's Whisper
1x Nomad Outpost
1x Orzhov Signet
1x Path of Ancestry
1x Path to Exile
1x Patron of the Vein
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x Phyrexian Reclamation
3x Plains
1x Rakdos Signet
1x Rakish Heir
1x Read the Bones
1x Reconnaissance
1x Return to Dust
1x Rugged Prairie
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Sanctum Seeker
1x Scoured Barrens
1x Scroll Rack
1x Shared Animosity
1x Sign in Blood
1x Skullclamp
1x Sol Ring
1x Stensia Masquerade
1x Stromkirk Captain
1x Stromkirk Noble
1x Sulfurous Springs
8x Swamp
1x Sword of Light and Shadow
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Teferi's Protection
1x Torment of Hailfire
1x Twilight Prophet
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Utter End
1x Vampire Nighthawk
1x Vampire Nocturnus
1x Vandalblast
1x Vanquisher's Banner
1x Vault of the Archangel
1x Viscera Seer
1x Yahenni, Undying Partisan
EDH: RWB Edgar Markov The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Oloro, Ageless ascetic The current updated decklist is here
EDH: UWG Phelddagrif, The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign The current updated decklist is here
EDH: WUB Alela, Artful provocateur The current updated decklist is here
EDH: GB Hapatra, vizier of poisons The current updated decklist is here
ISBpathfinder has a nice low curve list in a thread that a lot of people have contributed to here: https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/783225-edgar-markov-low-mana-curve-build
As you said, this deck can go for lethal turn 3 with 3 one-drop vampires and shared animosity, yet you run so few one-drops. ISBpathfinder runs 16 but I run all 17. I think Edgar wants to go aggro as both of his abilities are best for that. Therefore, I’d recommend cutting a lot of your ramp, mana sinks, and cards that cost 3 or more mana. Here are my recommendations:
In:
Out:
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB