Found interest card, what do you think about Raid Bombardment? Mass Hysteria?
Raid Bombardment - how is this better than a three mana lord? My issue is that it doesn't help vampires live and if you have anthems you might actually drop this benefit. It is kind of awkward because it leaves a narrow range that it gives this buff and it doesn't help your creatures survive combat or get past blockers.
Mass Hysteria - I think of all of the mass haste effects, I think it is probably the one that is the most viable. My issue with the card though is that you probably need it in an opening hand or need it while pushing a lot of cards through for it to be good. I can imagine drawing it on like turn 5 without a strong draw engine its going to feel kind of awkward. I do think its probably one of the more viable means of running a haste outlet though. I don't necessarily feel that I need mass haste but if you were going to pick something up for that I think either this or Ogre Battledriver would be the directions I would consider.
Yes, that's true. In effect Phyrexian Arena could be better than Dark Tutelage, but I was going for a strict substitute to Bob. However, in a three-colored deck filled with low-costed spells, it'd be harder to cast Phyrexian Arena turn 3 than it would Dark Tutelage.
Yea I suppose that's fair.
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Yeah you don't really want mass hysteria in this deck. Don't get me wrong that and Concordant Crossroads are good haste enablers but you have to realize its everybody at the table getting haste not just you. So if other token or swarm deck get more a foothold than you they can start beating at will against you. Or if somebody stymes a all out attack from you everybody gets free hits with whatever they just summoned.
Yeah you don't really want mass hysteria in this deck. Don't get me wrong that and Concordant Crossroads are good haste enablers but you have to realize its everybody at the table getting haste not just you. So if other token or swarm deck get more a foothold than you they can start beating at will against you. Or if somebody stymes a all out attack from you everybody gets free hits with whatever they just summoned.
I am also very cautious of a lot of the enabler cards that are not on vampires because what if you get a hand full of enablers and not enough vampires / draw. In most cases you can make more vampires work because of the free tokens from Edgar and the potential to play and use Edgar as an anthem if need be when you are running low on things to do but if you get too many creature enablers it can be a very bad result. I think mass haste is an effect that I don't overly need because in a lot of cases it takes a few turns to play several vamps + lords and the few creatures having haste each turn isn't as key especially given that Edgar Markov has haste built into his own anthem effect.
Its also worth asking how many non combat syphon / damage effects you run and how key they are to the strategy. In a lot of cases I do probably 1/3 - 1/2 of my output via non combat sources.
Have you considered extra combat steps enabler? Waves of Aggression plus land tax seems to work well together.
Most of them feel winmore. If I am in a situation where I can swing smoothly and an extra combat might work then I am already probably doing fine. Most combat tricks like that are in the 4-7 mana range and Edgar is already at 6 mana if I have a nice big board that can attack already so I think to some degree it overlaps with our commander too.
If you can get set up with a bunch of vamps, pump them / play edgar and stick him then I think you are already doing fairly well. In a lot of cases I end up spending mana and resources giving anthems and evasion to allow me to connect to players so it makes it also harder to cast extra combat effects due to that. Its possible if you wanted to go super all in, something like Final Fortune could be sweet as it gives you that tempo extra turn where its possible you could play Sanctum Seer, attack and if it goes through you are probably good to smash that extra turn and win right there. I do really love the feel of Final Fortune but in the end its wayyyyyyyyyyy too risky and while it makes for some of the coolest stories to think of winning off of it, it sits in your hand all game and if you are doing well its not something you should really do lol.
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forerunner of the legion seems pretty good, tutors for a silver-bullet vamp, gets a body from edgar markov, and immediately pumps another vampire +1/+1. If it stays in play its a pseudo-anthem effect for any subsequent vampire ETB
forerunner of the legion seems pretty good, tutors for a silver-bullet vamp, gets a body from edgar markov, and immediately pumps another vampire +1/+1. If it stays in play its a pseudo-anthem effect for any subsequent vampire ETB
I think its close to being good but I think they went a little conservative. The things I would have liked to see for me to really like this card are:
Tutor could have been to hand instead of topdeck. It would encourage me to tutor for cheaper vamps this way so I could play it alongside a 1 drop.
The buff could have been shifted to be some sort of counter (permenant) buff or be an anthem for all vamps. I looked at the rest of the cycle of this style of card and I felt like vamps got one of the worst effects for this cycle.
It could have cost one less.
I ranked them in priority that I would have rather seen the effect work. As it stands, I think there are too few things I would tutor to topdeck and because its a slow tutor and I have to show it I feel like it begs for a hard answer. Most of the vamps worth tutoring in this deck require us to be set up so announcing to everyone that we are about to try to play a haymaker big vamp seems sort of ill advised. I really do think this card came close bit I think it fell about 15-20% short of where I would have wanted it to be for me to want to run it.
Yea, I have several issues with trying for that as well. I might want that sort of effect but announcing it to my opponents and passing turn before I can execute that assuming I can even execute it the following turn makes me think opponents will save a good response for me trying to do it. Its a question of how important you feel some of your higher priority vampires are but I am not sold that a topdeck tutor on a so so vampire is very good. I really dislike a slow reveal + wait to get it tutor like this to be honest.
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If it had flash that would have fixed it. Admittedly then it should have been rare. Then the cc, to effect, to static effect, would have been too good, maybe.
If it had flash that would have fixed it. Admittedly then it should have been rare. Then the cc, to effect, to static effect, would have been too good, maybe.
Yea, I think its about 80% of where I want it right now which is why I don't run it. I think it needed just a small bump up for it to have been good from where it is right now.
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whats the meta like that you pilot this deck in? does it fall flat against the mid-range and ramp decks top end? I really like the aggressive slant and wonder if there is any late game should your opponents weather the initial onslaught. Im building this deck with a few budget picks (tutors), but am keeping the overall idea intact. Super excited to run it against the ramp and midrange decks in my local meta, just hope it gets there.
whats the meta like that you pilot this deck in? does it fall flat against the mid-range and ramp decks top end? I really like the aggressive slant and wonder if there is any late game should your opponents weather the initial onslaught. Im building this deck with a few budget picks (tutors), but am keeping the overall idea intact. Super excited to run it against the ramp and midrange decks in my local meta, just hope it gets there.
I have played this deck over a few metas and I would say the average meta I play in is mostly a non combo non MLD style of meta. There are a few combo decks but for the most part they are not tuned to execute their infinites quickly. This deck tends to play fairly well against decks that dont intend to win before turn 6 but its slow enough that if you play against competative fast combo decks it lacks the interaction to disrupt them reliably and it tends to not be able to go off before a deck like that.
The list as I have in the OP tends to play very well into decks that plan to win later in the game and or ramp a bunch and play a value game. Just put a lot of priority into getting unfair draw until you get the hang of things.
I think it could be played but my question is how do either of those effects play for you outside of the combo? You would still need some sort of enabler to make cycling the body through play infinitely do something so there would need to be a third piece which this deck as I have it has several of. I just question if those two cards specifically are useful to the deck.
I don't play combo myself but I think its a valid question as to how well the pieces of the combo fit your deck outside of the combo. I think the best combos for any deck are the ones that use cards the deck naturally would be interested in running in case the combo does not come together you want those cards to still play a decent role. I think the Leonin Relic-WarderAnimate Dead combo is decent in that its somewhat compact but those two cards don't fit all that well into the deck based on what they can do on their own merit where I think in a lot of cases the mana altars fit the concept of this deck better. I don't feel like I need mana altars in my current list but I think they have better synergy and the cards they work with seem a little better to me as well.
I don't play combo so I am not sure I am the best one to try to run through all of the options but I do think I would start with the altars and see what you can do from there if you want to give a combo focus to vamps. My concern with playing vamps as a combo deck is that you really need to increase your interaction vs opposing combo which to me means that you really want to sort of gut the core of being a vampire tribal deck and become a control / combo deck. You lack blue and if you try to run all of these vamps outside of the combo you wont have interaction to disrupt opposing combo so I think fundamentally if you want to play this deck as combo vs other combo it needs to look SIGNIFICANTLY different from what I have. I would say you would probably want to do a ground up rebuild around your combos in that case and still I am leery because again, we dont have access to blue and if you shift to combo the card draw needs to change completely. I guess what I am saying is that I question if you really want to build vamps as a combo deck because I don't know that it can move fast enough and or interact fast enough. I think vamps especially as a tribal deck is more designed to be a fast aggro deck for non fast combo based metas. Don't get me wrong I can totally win by turn 5-6 with a good start but the problem is that is about as fast as I can win and I know of combo decks that can go off by turn 2-4 that we just cant interact with well. This deck as I have it is a deck designed to try to be the aggressor in almost every game. When you start finding yourself not being the aggressor it falls apart.
Fair enough. I came across the combo while looking around and thought since there are 3 enablers in the deck, it could provide a secondary win con if need be.
Are you so sure about running arterial flow? I have mixed impressions about it impact in this build...
I have not gotten to play it yet so... no I am not confident in it
Its something I want to try out. Ideally it forces opponents to choose between proactive plays and reactive plays which either way it ideally is profitable for this deck. Its sort of like Blightning for each opponent which the concept of Blightning fits the style of deck we are just not playing for multiplayer due to being a single opponent. It also punches in for 2 life from each opponent which is also not nothing for this style of deck.
I just got my cards yesterday and am hoping to get some testing this weekend with the new cards.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I took a break from Merieke,Nekusar and Vorinclex to play your list. My meta was definitely tired of my decks and had shaped to counter them. This will be a new spin on things. I'll report my experiences with your build Sunday after I get some games in.
I took a break from Merieke,Nekusar and Vorinclex to play your list. My meta was definitely tired of my decks and had shaped to counter them. This will be a new spin on things. I'll report my experiences with your build Sunday after I get some games in.
Sweet I'm looking forward to hearing about it. I am also hoping to try out my vamps with the new cards this weekend. I am waiting for one last package that should have three of my vamps though so I really hope that shows up today or tomorrow so I can use them. Let me know if anything feels out of place.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I've been thinking of putting in Bloodchief Ascension in my deck and when I looked over your list, I was surprised that I didn't see it. It is such an efficient card that gives you a lot of reach. Is there a particular reason why you decided against it? While my list isn't as efficient as yours, I am always looking for ways to kill the table.
It’s not that good as it looks like. That card is very slow, only powerful if you cast it on turn 1, but think, do you want cast enchantment that will not doing anything 3 turns, or you cast two vampires?)
I got my games in on Saturday with this build and it was utterly amazing. Those explosive turn 1 and 2 plays really cripple opponents mindsets and you can just win so fast. When the deck didn't explode, it played a very good midrange to long game. I achieved quite a bit getting stuck on few lands and slow draws. Even managed to turn the corner in a game where I was down to 17 life, and played Ad Nauseam went to 5 life drew 15 cards and came back and steam rolled the whole table. So overall, very well built deck and very fun to pilot.
Now to what I saw that didn't work so well. Arterial Flow didn't seem very good at all. Every time I had it in hand it just felt bad, like I wanted something else. I used it as a bait spell in front of something important to see if it would be countered or would people dump cards before the discard happened, and even then it still felt bad. Dark Prophecy just felt like a bad draw engine, and for the triple black cost I'd rather have Necropotence in hand. The times I wished I had it, it would have been great. Most the time I fed it to a mox.
Depending on how your meta looks, Cover of Darkness may or may not fit. I'm in a heavy black meta, so the fear aspect of it doesn't work so well, but again that all depends on your meta. Cards that I'm on the fence about. Twilight Prophet can be really, really amazing. The only issue I see with it is that since this is a really low mana curve build, we are not benefitting very much from its effect. I would expect in a deck with a higher cmc curve it would be more relevant and gain more value. Austere Command is a good card and multi-functional, but I wonder if it would be better off as something else? Serra Ascendant can be nuts if played very early, but only saw it late game and usually by then was hovering around the 15-20 life range.
Last, but not least. Reconnaissance is definitely the all-star to the deck. Being able to go to full alpha on somebody and yank back the creatures that get block and then untap the creatures that dealt combat damage just frustrates your opponent to no end. Truly a fantastic piece of tech for an all in aggro deck.
What are your thoughts on Enduring Renewal? It's very strong when combined with a sac outlet, letting you pump out lots of tokens for effectively one mana each, and makes it easy to recover from board wipes.
What are your thoughts on Enduring Renewal? It's very strong when combined with a sac outlet, letting you pump out lots of tokens for effectively one mana each, and makes it easy to recover from board wipes.
I'd rather go with Scapegoat as a Wrath prevention as ER is like Dark Prophecy - it needs to be at board first to work. Combo should not be a focus of this deck and this one needs at least two parts to work reliably. It also blocks 40% of our draws and basicaly kills aggro plan if someone destroys sac outlet.
Scapegoat is good even if it's just a cheap, instantaneous way to get cheap vampires back to your hand in order to cast them again and get even more tokens. It doesn't even need to be a reactive card; it could just as easily be seen as a proactive card.
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Raid Bombardment - how is this better than a three mana lord? My issue is that it doesn't help vampires live and if you have anthems you might actually drop this benefit. It is kind of awkward because it leaves a narrow range that it gives this buff and it doesn't help your creatures survive combat or get past blockers.
Mass Hysteria - I think of all of the mass haste effects, I think it is probably the one that is the most viable. My issue with the card though is that you probably need it in an opening hand or need it while pushing a lot of cards through for it to be good. I can imagine drawing it on like turn 5 without a strong draw engine its going to feel kind of awkward. I do think its probably one of the more viable means of running a haste outlet though. I don't necessarily feel that I need mass haste but if you were going to pick something up for that I think either this or Ogre Battledriver would be the directions I would consider.
Yea I suppose that's fair.
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I am also very cautious of a lot of the enabler cards that are not on vampires because what if you get a hand full of enablers and not enough vampires / draw. In most cases you can make more vampires work because of the free tokens from Edgar and the potential to play and use Edgar as an anthem if need be when you are running low on things to do but if you get too many creature enablers it can be a very bad result. I think mass haste is an effect that I don't overly need because in a lot of cases it takes a few turns to play several vamps + lords and the few creatures having haste each turn isn't as key especially given that Edgar Markov has haste built into his own anthem effect.
Its also worth asking how many non combat syphon / damage effects you run and how key they are to the strategy. In a lot of cases I do probably 1/3 - 1/2 of my output via non combat sources.
Most of them feel winmore. If I am in a situation where I can swing smoothly and an extra combat might work then I am already probably doing fine. Most combat tricks like that are in the 4-7 mana range and Edgar is already at 6 mana if I have a nice big board that can attack already so I think to some degree it overlaps with our commander too.
If you can get set up with a bunch of vamps, pump them / play edgar and stick him then I think you are already doing fairly well. In a lot of cases I end up spending mana and resources giving anthems and evasion to allow me to connect to players so it makes it also harder to cast extra combat effects due to that. Its possible if you wanted to go super all in, something like Final Fortune could be sweet as it gives you that tempo extra turn where its possible you could play Sanctum Seer, attack and if it goes through you are probably good to smash that extra turn and win right there. I do really love the feel of Final Fortune but in the end its wayyyyyyyyyyy too risky and while it makes for some of the coolest stories to think of winning off of it, it sits in your hand all game and if you are doing well its not something you should really do lol.
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I think its close to being good but I think they went a little conservative. The things I would have liked to see for me to really like this card are:
I ranked them in priority that I would have rather seen the effect work. As it stands, I think there are too few things I would tutor to topdeck and because its a slow tutor and I have to show it I feel like it begs for a hard answer. Most of the vamps worth tutoring in this deck require us to be set up so announcing to everyone that we are about to try to play a haymaker big vamp seems sort of ill advised. I really do think this card came close bit I think it fell about 15-20% short of where I would have wanted it to be for me to want to run it.
Yea, I have several issues with trying for that as well. I might want that sort of effect but announcing it to my opponents and passing turn before I can execute that assuming I can even execute it the following turn makes me think opponents will save a good response for me trying to do it. Its a question of how important you feel some of your higher priority vampires are but I am not sold that a topdeck tutor on a so so vampire is very good. I really dislike a slow reveal + wait to get it tutor like this to be honest.
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Yea, I think its about 80% of where I want it right now which is why I don't run it. I think it needed just a small bump up for it to have been good from where it is right now.
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GVorinclex, Voice of HungerG
WUBMerieke Ri BeritWUB
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I have played this deck over a few metas and I would say the average meta I play in is mostly a non combo non MLD style of meta. There are a few combo decks but for the most part they are not tuned to execute their infinites quickly. This deck tends to play fairly well against decks that dont intend to win before turn 6 but its slow enough that if you play against competative fast combo decks it lacks the interaction to disrupt them reliably and it tends to not be able to go off before a deck like that.
The list as I have in the OP tends to play very well into decks that plan to win later in the game and or ramp a bunch and play a value game. Just put a lot of priority into getting unfair draw until you get the hang of things.
I think it could be played but my question is how do either of those effects play for you outside of the combo? You would still need some sort of enabler to make cycling the body through play infinitely do something so there would need to be a third piece which this deck as I have it has several of. I just question if those two cards specifically are useful to the deck.
There are a few other infinite combos as well mostly involving Phyrexian Altar & Ashnod's Altar that can go infinite that I think might have a little more synergy with the deck. Phyrexian Altar + Haakon, Stromgald Scourge + Bold Impaler can generate infinite tokens and I think the pieces are a little more friendly towards the gameplan of the deck. Elenda, the Dusk Rose + Ashnod's Altar + Nim Deathmantle (or Phyrexian Altar + Corpse Dance) can also go infinite. You could also run Reveillark into the Ashnod's Altar + Nim Deathmantle combo to loop infinite mana and rez all of your targetable creatures on demand.
I don't play combo myself but I think its a valid question as to how well the pieces of the combo fit your deck outside of the combo. I think the best combos for any deck are the ones that use cards the deck naturally would be interested in running in case the combo does not come together you want those cards to still play a decent role. I think the Leonin Relic-Warder Animate Dead combo is decent in that its somewhat compact but those two cards don't fit all that well into the deck based on what they can do on their own merit where I think in a lot of cases the mana altars fit the concept of this deck better. I don't feel like I need mana altars in my current list but I think they have better synergy and the cards they work with seem a little better to me as well.
I don't play combo so I am not sure I am the best one to try to run through all of the options but I do think I would start with the altars and see what you can do from there if you want to give a combo focus to vamps. My concern with playing vamps as a combo deck is that you really need to increase your interaction vs opposing combo which to me means that you really want to sort of gut the core of being a vampire tribal deck and become a control / combo deck. You lack blue and if you try to run all of these vamps outside of the combo you wont have interaction to disrupt opposing combo so I think fundamentally if you want to play this deck as combo vs other combo it needs to look SIGNIFICANTLY different from what I have. I would say you would probably want to do a ground up rebuild around your combos in that case and still I am leery because again, we dont have access to blue and if you shift to combo the card draw needs to change completely. I guess what I am saying is that I question if you really want to build vamps as a combo deck because I don't know that it can move fast enough and or interact fast enough. I think vamps especially as a tribal deck is more designed to be a fast aggro deck for non fast combo based metas. Don't get me wrong I can totally win by turn 5-6 with a good start but the problem is that is about as fast as I can win and I know of combo decks that can go off by turn 2-4 that we just cant interact with well. This deck as I have it is a deck designed to try to be the aggressor in almost every game. When you start finding yourself not being the aggressor it falls apart.
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GVorinclex, Voice of HungerG
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I have not gotten to play it yet so... no I am not confident in it
Its something I want to try out. Ideally it forces opponents to choose between proactive plays and reactive plays which either way it ideally is profitable for this deck. Its sort of like Blightning for each opponent which the concept of Blightning fits the style of deck we are just not playing for multiplayer due to being a single opponent. It also punches in for 2 life from each opponent which is also not nothing for this style of deck.
I just got my cards yesterday and am hoping to get some testing this weekend with the new cards.
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GVorinclex, Voice of HungerG
WUBMerieke Ri BeritWUB
UBRNekusar, the MindrazerUBR
GWUBAtraxa, Praetors' VoiceGWUB
Sweet I'm looking forward to hearing about it. I am also hoping to try out my vamps with the new cards this weekend. I am waiting for one last package that should have three of my vamps though so I really hope that shows up today or tomorrow so I can use them. Let me know if anything feels out of place.
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This is a great list.
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
Now to what I saw that didn't work so well. Arterial Flow didn't seem very good at all. Every time I had it in hand it just felt bad, like I wanted something else. I used it as a bait spell in front of something important to see if it would be countered or would people dump cards before the discard happened, and even then it still felt bad. Dark Prophecy just felt like a bad draw engine, and for the triple black cost I'd rather have Necropotence in hand. The times I wished I had it, it would have been great. Most the time I fed it to a mox.
Depending on how your meta looks, Cover of Darkness may or may not fit. I'm in a heavy black meta, so the fear aspect of it doesn't work so well, but again that all depends on your meta. Cards that I'm on the fence about. Twilight Prophet can be really, really amazing. The only issue I see with it is that since this is a really low mana curve build, we are not benefitting very much from its effect. I would expect in a deck with a higher cmc curve it would be more relevant and gain more value. Austere Command is a good card and multi-functional, but I wonder if it would be better off as something else? Serra Ascendant can be nuts if played very early, but only saw it late game and usually by then was hovering around the 15-20 life range.
Last, but not least. Reconnaissance is definitely the all-star to the deck. Being able to go to full alpha on somebody and yank back the creatures that get block and then untap the creatures that dealt combat damage just frustrates your opponent to no end. Truly a fantastic piece of tech for an all in aggro deck.
GVorinclex, Voice of HungerG
WUBMerieke Ri BeritWUB
UBRNekusar, the MindrazerUBR
GWUBAtraxa, Praetors' VoiceGWUB
Scapegoat is good even if it's just a cheap, instantaneous way to get cheap vampires back to your hand in order to cast them again and get even more tokens. It doesn't even need to be a reactive card; it could just as easily be seen as a proactive card.
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