Metallic Mimic doesn't generate a token off of Edgar Markov. Mimic's creature type is triggered on its ETB trigger so it misses Edgar's cast trigger. Mimic also requires to be played before other vampires. So drawing it after turn 2 means you lose a lot of it's power. I think these are the reasons it isn't in ISBPathfinder's list.
Yea, my meta is developed and diversified enough to face many strategies. Mana elves and tokens are common so Evincar fits here alright and Dictate is great against Narset and such.
I'd like to raise another topic though as I wonder about importance of evasion outlets you play and their value compared to removal and pumps. As for me cards like Reconnaissance, Cover of Darkness or Goblin War Drums are simply waste of space that could be used for removal (eg. Retribution of the Meek) or permanent pump effects like Coat of Arms. Wouldn't alpha-striking be more relevant than slow but steady beatdown? The former gives an opponent a chance to block (and lose his creatures in a process) while the latter gives him more opportunities to find an answer or wincon (if he's able).
When I started playing vampires I had a much higher curve and I played arround with more of those type of cards. As time went on I wanted to push my count high my curve low and anything that is not a vampire I try to keep cheap and fast. It has just been a lot smoother with the card draw engines I run. So many of those cards have a lot of situations where they are only so so or depend on what your opponents are doing that I found myself sitting on them for too much time. Even though the evasion stuff is not strong hitting its cheap and I can cast it whenever and it is fairly good where as I found a lot of these hard hitting effects to be situational based on how many attackers I have, how many defenders my opponents have, what kind of creatures they have and so on.
The more cards that we run that are just generally good all of the time and can be multi cast with other cards the better our draw engines become. It is the mentality that I have taken on for this list and it has been working for me. I am not saying that those cards cant work but I found a lot of them to be slow and kind of situational based on what opponents are doing.
If mana elves and tokens are common in your meta wouldn't Coat of Arms help your opponents as well?
Yea, coat of arms is really questionable given that it benefits opponents too. Its possible still if you can out swarm them but man it would be bad if they live through the first turn and overcame our numbers. I found myself sitting with it rotting in hand too many times when I did run it early on. It is valid to say though that I am heavier swarm now than when I originally ran it so its possible that the lower and faster curve could make better use of it but I still have a lot of issues with it from the standpoint that any turn that I untap with a shedload of vamps in play and 5+ mana is probably a good game for me anyways.
Not if they are dead ;). Anyway CoA would be used as an alpha-strike tool in a scenario when you can kill with it but if you're worried about helping opps there is less potent but easier to play Obelisk of Urd or even Eldrazi Monument. You could even use Vampiric Fury. They are only examples to choose from thought.
Its possible to get it to work but I like to think of it from this perspective, what if we go into a wrath heavy game where it becomes a lot more questioable to play it. Things like Malakir Bloodwitch can have a similar damage output (given you have to assume there are some amount of blockers). Lets assume you have 8 vamps and get to cast Malakir Bloodwitch (you jump up to 10 vamps and syphon 30 life). In the other case of Coat of Arms you jump to probably around 64 damage worth of output and possibly bludgeon 1 player down (getting a second is probably questionable given blockers between two players). Now in this case you killed a player (probably) with COA unless of course they had several blockers or some sort of defense. My issue with Coat of Arms though is it kind of plays the math with what if I have a crazy out of control board of creatures and my opponent has nothing. What if that opponent has a Propaganda now.... well now you did no damage to them because you cant afford to attack with anything + play Coat of Arms. What if the player you want to attack has a Naturalize and pops it as you attack? What if that player is a token deck and has tokens set up already?
My issue with Coat of Arms and big expensive cards like it is that it assumes that the player you are trying to kill have nothing set up and no answers. I cant tell you the last time that my biggest concern was some defenseless player who has nothing in play and no way to interact with me. It is possible that they are some sort of glass cannon combo deck I guess but in that case I feel like everyone at the table is probably trying to kill them anyways and playing a non combo aggro deck with few answers vs a glass cannon combo seems like a bad matchup anyways.
This is all assuming we are in a good situation too when we get up to the mana to cast something like this. There is always the chance we play against a sweeper based deck and we have trouble ever getting our numbers up. I don't like paying a lot of mana to try to enable what I hope is a good board when so many things can go wrong with making a big heavy play like that.
Well sure, I get your point. But it'll be a bit hard alphastriking with beefy vamps when your opponents have beefy elves and/or beefy tokens . So there is some merit in evasion. I alphastrike with my Edric deck because they have evasion so when I pump them then I get the win.
Evasion helps keep our board alive while connecting us for damage. You can also buff creatures so that they don't easily trade in combat but I just don't want to spend an entire turn trying to cast a buff that gets me chump blocked if I might otherwise be able to cast 2-4 cards given some good card draw engine. What if you cast some big buff and walk in and get heavily chump blocked and kill nobody and then the next person uses a Naturalize on your expensive buff? Part of the reason to run cheap cards is so you can multi cast this stuff and it makes spot removal a lot worse.
Would you prefer to use Grasp of Fate over Crib Swap? Same Mana cost, but instant and makes a vampire.
Grasp of Fate hits any nonland meaning it can hit artifacts / enchantments / creatures / planeswalkers. It also hits one for each opponent where as Crib Swap hits a single creature and gives them a chump blocker that potentially offsets the vampire you get from it especially considering they can block that turn with the token you give them but you cant attack that turn with the vampire you make. An opponent could shut us down with a variety of cards that are not always creatures so having the diversity in removal makes you less susceptible to some random effect like Propaganda shutting down our attack options.
With running a lighter removal suite I put more priority in being able to be versatile in what I remove. There is also a lot more tempo in the concept of removing a permenant from each opponent than there is in removing a single creature from one opponent. If you don't care for Grasp of Fate I could also see Chaos Warp, Vindicate, or Utter End also being options but I doubt I would resort to creature only spot removal. Keep in mind that with this type of deck you really don't want to be trying to disrupt opponents gameplans with removal so much as responding to things that will cause you to lose the game or keep you from playing the game you want with spot removal. Value the ability to target what you need to remove and or when you need the removal over trying to get some sort of tempo / disruption play. If you see a lot of combo it may also be relevant to move to Swords to Plowshares / Disenchant type effects but I would do that more reactionary based on if that is what your meta plays.
</blockquote>[quote from="AstralWanderer »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/783225-edgar-markov-low-mana-curve-build?comment=207"]Why no metallic mimic? Also curious as to why goblin bombardment over impact tremors?
Metallic Mimic - I think its ok and if its something you want to play its probably ok. It does not give a vampire when it is cast though as it does not become a vampire until it is in play and that is a lot of the reason I don't play it because I think its actually weak on curve so its not very good until you have a lot of vampires in play already. In this sense I think its a bad card to curve play as a two drop or even as your turn three play and I don't run it because of that. Its something I would not cast until I essentially exhaust my hand of vampires.
Goblin Bombardment vs Impact Tremors - most of this comes down to the fact that Impact Tremors needs to be played before a bunch of guys but Goblin Bombardment can be played after them. With Goblin Bombardment we can control the board and use creatures as removal and we don't need to draw it before we blow our hand. impact tremors can still be a very strong card and I did run it for a while but my issue was that it needed to hit play and stick for some amount of time to get its value back. I saw multiple times where it would die in the first turn or two of me playing it not to mention times where I might draw it late in a game where it became a little worse due to that. Goblin Bombardment is a little weaker at hitting players for damage but I like it because it can be played after I play a swarm of creatures and its value is strong at that point and it gets its value back potentially quicker than Impact Tremors does if you expect both of them to possibly be quickly answered. If you expect either one to live a long time then yea Impact Tremors is great but I found that I was getting the value back from Goblin Bombardment faster than Impact Tremors because of the fact that I could play it after I play a swarm of guys rather than needing to cast a bunch of dudes after casting it.
Considering how proactively we are trying to play out a swarm of bodies with this deck anything that you can cast after having a swarm of guys rather than needing to have in play before you cast a swarm of guys is going to be a bit stronger. Bloodlord of Vaasgoth is a good example of this in that he wants to be played when you already have creatures in play and can attack and then he makes your next creatures good but he also costs a lot of mana and a board before you play him for him to be maximized. I played with him early on and I quickly realized that he was far too slow because of the fact that he cost a lot of mana but he was only trying to make future plays stronger rather than what you already had in play better so in that sense he was incredibly slow.
Metallic Mimic doesn't generate a token off of Edgar Markov. Mimic's creature type is triggered on its ETB trigger so it misses Edgar's cast trigger. Mimic also requires to be played before other vampires. So drawing it after turn 2 means you lose a lot of it's power. I think these are the reasons it isn't in ISBPathfinder's list.
Yea, its downfall is mostly tied to the fact that it gives no token. Not getting that token makes it so much weaker than the vampire anthems. I still think its probably not that bad if someone wants to run it. I just don't think its quite good enough without getting that token too.
The other downside to Coat is memory. If its vampire cleric, vampire rouge, vampire soldier, the subtypes come into play, then you have to find out what else is in play from other folks creature types that buffs them as well. Its why I never considered it in my edh ally deck. SOOO many memory issues on sooo many common types. Way more hassle than its worth. Cathars crusade is much better since all you have to do is remember the trigger per ETB.
Stupid thing maybe, but do you have enough devotion to black to use Grey Merchant as a secondary Malikar Bloodwitch? Looking through the list seems you might, but list VS actual play can greatly differ
The other downside to Coat is memory. If its vampire cleric, vampire rouge, vampire soldier, the subtypes come into play, then you have to find out what else is in play from other folks creature types that buffs them as well. Its why I never considered it in my edh ally deck. SOOO many memory issues on sooo many common types. Way more hassle than its worth. Cathars crusade is much better since all you have to do is remember the trigger per ETB.
Stupid thing maybe, but do you have enough devotion to black to use Grey Merchant as a secondary Malikar Bloodwitch? Looking through the list seems you might, but list VS actual play can greatly differ
Cathar's Crusade has its own issues which tend to be that its incredibly slow to build up. It might be reasonable to cast it plus a vamp in the same turn but beyond that you would be looking at a very late game move before you could play it + multiple vamps in a turn.
Gary maybe... the downside is still going to be that any of our vampires that we cast count as two vamps for Bloodwitch which is really strong. Even with a stronger prevalence of black vamps I still think that Gary would probably only hit like.... half as hard if that not to mention that he is not really furthering our vampire board. I guess I see some issues with him offhand is kind of where I stand. I feel like you might just get further off of like Price of Progress or Sulfuric Vortex. While I think the lifegain on Malakir Bloodwitch is strong, I run it more for the life reduction to my opponents so when you look at an effect that is maybe half as strong for the same mana I think its valid to ask if going cheaper and just dishing out a ton of damage is better.
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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.
Wow ISB, I really do love reading your card analysis. You are very insightful, and sem to have this min-maxing thing down pat! And I have too agree with almost all of your evaluations. I really liked your comparision between Goblin Bombardment and Impact Tremors. I'm currently running both, but have contemplated removing Tremors. I'm pretty much running your low-curve build, with Cloudstone Curio(?), Shared Animosity(!), Stensia Masquerade(!?), Scapegoat(!!), and Mirror Entity(?!).
I do like the syphon effects of this deck, and have been looking at another RIX card no one has mentioned yet, Tilonalli's Summoner. Yeah, I know, it's not a vampire, and it doesn't do much the turn it comes out; so it's probably crap for this build. But it is cheap and the tokens it can produce (next turn) interact quite well with Purphoros, and various other syphon/sac effects, and even more when Mirror Entity is out. It would seem to be a good recovery card from a board wipe. Our card list is tight, and I'm not thinking this can make the cut, but any comments on this card?
Also, more importantly, I'm trying to decide if we can work Breath of Fury into this deck. I've used this with great success in other red aggro decks, and dropped with Animosity and just a few 1/1's even without evasion it can be a game ender. A quick basic math calculation with just 6 vanilla 1/1's and Breath/Animosity on board, we generate 138 points of unblocked damage after only 3 attack phases. Especially useful after a board wipe, with many of the syphon/buff/counter/sac options we employ. Your thoughts?
Oh, and the last card I really would have liked to cram into this deck... Sadistic Hypnotist. To bad he isn't a vampire.
Well, more reports. Minions' Murmurs is fantastic. Being able to dump your hand in the first couple turns and then refill was great. I'm surprised how fast and consistent this deck stays. Golden Demise I've concluded is a meta call. It's good for token/swarm and offing utility creatures. Other than that it should probably go. The only other problem I'm seeing atm is the land base needs some tweeking. Having red or white mana right off or when you need it can be really hard sometimes. I'm currently trying to find what would help alleviate this.
Elsewise ISB, deck is awesome and runs well. The others love it and hate it all at the same time. And as a sidenote, Necropotence is a kill on sight/counter now. My playgroups realized the power it brings to the deck and are aware I will jam it asap so it has earn a reputation.
Heh. I had a game a week or two ago where I dealt 34 damage to myself over the course of the game with Necropotence...won at 4 life--I got hit for damage by someone else at the table one time.
What I've been finding is that in 3-player games, this deck is generally annihilating the table (I've had a few games won turn 6 or 7), but adding that 4th player is just closing me out. Now, I have only had a few games since I added more draw to the deck, so I'm not 100% on this assessment yet, but it does make me a little curious about some of the evaluations I've seen here. Namely, I see a few big effects cards being dismissed as "win more," but I wonder if that's not being hasty. After all, this deck isn't winning with a combo assembled in one turn, and it can go from smashing face to having no board presence and nothing to do after a wrath or two, maybe a counterspell thrown in--I had this exact thing happen to me in a 4-player game. Board got wrathed (I actually have kept Boros Charm as some protection against this), Charmed, then got wrathed by the next player. A turn sequence later, and the angry Omnath deck before me in turn order played out a Greater Good. Seeing that go through, and with no other plays available to me, I put forward Necropotence only for that to eat a counter.
I've had a few games where I've dropped players fairly low before they stabilized/I ran out of gas, and it seems to me like some of the bigger effects that can double up on what we're already doing for an alpha strike could possibly bump up the win percentage. Now, I'm going to give it a few more games to see how all the added draw effects things, but I'm definitely thinking that the deck could benefit from some of the cards that have been labeled "win more" elsewhere in the thread.
Can someone please explain how you use Scapegoat? I am guessing it is wrath protection.
PS: I have been playing this deck for weeks now (about 90% exactly the same as ISB's list and 10% my own choices) and Metallic Mimic is definitely worth trying.
Can someone please explain how you use Scapegoat? I am guessing it is wrath protection.
PS: I have been playing this deck for weeks now (about 90% exactly the same as ISB's list and 10% my own choices) and Metallic Mimic is definitely worth trying.
Scapegoat is not simply for wrath protection. If you cast it at the end of the turn before yours, and bounce all your cheap, non-token vampires, then you can recast them during your turn for more value. So it serves a double purpose.
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How about Obelisk of Urd, Homura, Human Ascendant or Dictate of Heliod as personal, permanent boosts (I'm quitting CoA topic for good)? Each has its own merits with the only flaw being a mana cost, mostly for Ad Naus. Obelisk can be cast for cheap (each 1 mana vamp reduces its cost by 2), Dictate can be a combat trick and Homura flips easily given a number of sac outlets we play.
Speaking of sac outlets, we may also use Rector to cheat enchantments to play. Ranger of Eos may be another way to refill after a Wrath - I would play it over Minions' Murmurs which is only good when we're already winning. Bouncing back after a board wipe is the hardest thing here as we cannot afford to stop overwhelming opponents so there is little time to stop and draw cards when we still have Vamps to cast.
Obelisk of Urd I actually came somewhat close to testing it once or twice. I guess the question comes down to how much you end up needing to pay for it. I think I might have overly been concerned about the cost when it would come up with Bob or Ad Naus but I think more realistically the big concern with a 6 cost spell is paying 6 mana for it. I think there is a real decent chance that you can probably cast 2 vampires for probably 3-4 mana and then use those plus a little more mana to push this out. Being averse to something cost a lot of mana for me is a lot more about the amount of resource and how much of my turn it takes. I do think that +2/+2 is a solid buff but I think the big question is how much of a turn it really takes. You really don't need blockers all that often with this deck because you are hitting harder than most so using summoning sick creatures and tokens to power out an anthem is something I could totally see. Because of the direction of this build I can totally see a card like this being a lot more impressive than Dictate of Heliod because I think it probably is fairly likely that you could cast 2 creatures + this in a turn. I think that worry about Ad Naus / Bob for how hard they hit us with 6 drops is probably not the end of the world as long as our overall average is still reasonable but more realistic if you have some power draw going a bunch of 6 drops can be very hard to juggle and get cast. I like to ask myself the queston of how cards will look if I am drawing 5-7 cards a turn (kind of my average necropotence with this deck) and in a lot of cases I don't like justifying the mana for big splashy effects. I think this card does get past that in a better way.
Homura, Human Ascendant - if you can reliably flip this guy.... absolutely run him. I ran him in my first version of the deck and he was really cool but that list also did not swarm nearly as well in that build (but it did have more sac outlets). I found him to bring a huge target on me and if he is hard to flip as well, he just seems clunky to pay 6 to cast out and see how things shape up on their own.
Dictate of Heliod - It costs a lot of mana and I don't think it does enough. Eldrazi Monument is probably a better card and I think Obelisk of Urd is another card with a lot more potential as well. My big concern with big splashy effects comes back to finding the time to cast them if things are going well. It might be kind of a strange philosophy to go off of how does my deck work when its doing well but with a low curve design like this, the deck probably is not doing so well if you cant find any of your draw so while if you are doing poorly expensive cards might function better... these expensive cards get clogged up and or discarded if you are doing well which I think makes it an odd design decision to run them. I also like to ask myself what if this is in my opening hand or what if I found this type of card in multiple at the same time and ultimately I have moved to a lower curve with cards that I feel have a more positive outcome at all phases of the game rather than come splashy cards that if they land at just the right time they might be good.
Academy Rector - I ran it in the earlier build as well when I had more sac outlets. Without having more sac outlets though it just doesn't quite do it for me.
Ranger of Eos - I did the math and the mana to cast it just did not add up. It depends a little on if there are specific one drops that you really want and while I could probably make some arguments that Serra Ascendant / Shadow Alley Denizen and a few other one drops are fairly sweet cards most of the issue is that I can not really justify the 3W for a non vampire creature that really does not fit the gameplan well. It comes down to how much you value any specific vampire but I ultimately decided that I did not value any one specific one drop all that much and that I was more interested in seeing a quantity of cards for as little mana as I could pay than I was in tutoring and toolboxing into the one drop slot. If I valued the body he comes on more or the tutor itself I could see it but as it was I saw him as more of a draw 2 effect for 4 mana. It could work but I just did not see enough cards to hand for the mana he costs which is why I excluded him.
Minions' Murmurs I have not played with the card myself yet but I think on average, as soon as I can draw 5+ cards with this card I think I am good to pull the trigger. I have not played with it yet myself but like I was saying with Ranger, in most cases I just want sheer numbers of cards. I run tutors to get very specific cards from my deck (usually necropotence and possibly a finisher) but most of the draw in this deck is just interested in throughput of draw given how many cards you draw and how much mana you have to pay to get it.
Overall I also have some reluctance to add some big splashy buff in part because we always have Edgar Markov in our command zone that could also be used for that exact same thing. Some of these cards might have more impact than casting him but there is also the fact that we always have access to him that gives some amount of consistency that makes me question big 5+ mana non vamp buffs. He is also a snowballing buff in that the longer he sticks the bigger the buff he is going to give and while he might not snowball as big or give as much stats as some of the others, having him in the command zone gives him some consistency that I don't see the need to add competition to that mana spot for. It might be true that if you time one of these effects just right you might have some horrible huge snowball victory but there tend to also be a lot of times that drawing those cards are wrong too and one advantage of relying a little more on Edgar Markov in that slot is that we have the constant access and don't have to draw him at the wrong times.
Wow ISB, I really do love reading your card analysis. You are very insightful, and sem to have this min-maxing thing down pat! And I have too agree with almost all of your evaluations. I really liked your comparision between Goblin Bombardment and Impact Tremors. I'm currently running both, but have contemplated removing Tremors. I'm pretty much running your low-curve build, with Cloudstone Curio(?), Shared Animosity(!), Stensia Masquerade(!?), Scapegoat(!!), and Mirror Entity(?!).
I do like the syphon effects of this deck, and have been looking at another RIX card no one has mentioned yet, Tilonalli's Summoner. Yeah, I know, it's not a vampire, and it doesn't do much the turn it comes out; so it's probably crap for this build. But it is cheap and the tokens it can produce (next turn) interact quite well with Purphoros, and various other syphon/sac effects, and even more when Mirror Entity is out. It would seem to be a good recovery card from a board wipe. Our card list is tight, and I'm not thinking this can make the cut, but any comments on this card?
Also, more importantly, I'm trying to decide if we can work Breath of Fury into this deck. I've used this with great success in other red aggro decks, and dropped with Animosity and just a few 1/1's even without evasion it can be a game ender. A quick basic math calculation with just 6 vanilla 1/1's and Breath/Animosity on board, we generate 138 points of unblocked damage after only 3 attack phases. Especially useful after a board wipe, with many of the syphon/buff/counter/sac options we employ. Your thoughts?
Oh, and the last card I really would have liked to cram into this deck... Sadistic Hypnotist. To bad he isn't a vampire.
Thanks, I try to do what I can. This thread explodes so often sometimes its a pain in the ass to keep up with lol. I am always interested to hear how things are working out for others too as in a lot of cases I am just trying to hear what is working / not working with others and see what I can do to make it work better.
Cloudstone Curio - I ran it early on but I cut it in part given how mana intensive it is to try to set up and execute in one turn. It felt a little slow to generate its value and I had a hard time hanging on to one drops for a 4+ mana play. Ultimately it seemed bad when I had access to good draw as well because it is a mana sink but it does not play well with also having a lot of cards. In a sense it is sort of like an alternative to having draw in that you can use few cards to generate more bodies without actually drawing into more.
Stensia Masquerade its ok. Its sort of like Rakish Heir with a little more buffing but it is not a vampire itself and does not come with an extra token. First strike can help vs utility creatures and tokens so I think its ok. It is a little slow to buff but I think ultimately its ok.
Mirror Entity my biggest issue is that it actively takes mana to be any sort of an anthem. The turn you drop it can be a little mana intensive as well to try to have immediate impact and to buff your creatures as you are already looking at 5+ mana to have a general buff. I cut it because of this as I felt like if I actually was getting a lot of cards flowing it just felt like it was too mana intensive to add up. It has some good potential if you can slow roll it behind a bunch of tokens and keep it for a turn or more but I just felt like it was kind of an all in and wait sort of a creature considering the turn it hits play it actually does not have very good impact. I suppose it comes down to a question of if opponents can answer it or not which is a valid reason to consider running something but I also like having a little more immediate return in most cases which is why I opted to move on from it.
Tilonalli's Summoner I felt it was a little fragile and had a lot of what if aimed towards it being drawn and played early on. What if you draw into it on turn 6 instead of curving it? It also requires itself to get to attacking to make the tokens so it has a full turn where it is not active and even when it does attack, its very fragile with no natural evasion of its own so in that sense why run it over say Secure the Wastes or Tempt with Vengeance which have less forecast knowledge for opponents and are a little harder to respond to. You open yourself up to a turn where you are forecasting your next move and opponents get a full turn to respond and ready themselves in which they could spot remove or wrath. The question in my mind is in what situation do you see yourself using this card? It is very mana intensive to use the token making ability which does not mesh well with having heavy card draw. It is far better for this type of build to have low cost cards that keep doing things and generating value that do not have a mana cost to maintain them. A good analogy of what I am talking about would be to look at Greed. The effect of this card is something that I really do want but the upfront cost of 3B and then the cost of B for every card I want is too mana intensive. I want to on general draw more cards than I pay mana for as a basis of how much I want to pay per draw. Whenever you are paying mana into an ability that comes away from your ability to play more cards. Necropotence is completely busted in this deck because we can easily move 5 cards a turn with this deck because of our low curve and the fact that it does not require mana per draw is exactly what breaks it for this list.
Breath of Fury it could work. Lets do a little math quick. I am going to disregard any blockers in this math and assume them all to be 1/1s for simplicity:
1 Creature: 1 damage
2 Creatures: 3 damage
3 Creatures: 6 damage
4 Creatures: 10 damage
5 Creatures: 15 damage
6 Creatures: 21 damage
7 Creatures: 28 damage
8 Creatures: 36 damage
9 Creatures: 45 damage
10 Creatures: 55 damage
So, obviously its a little silly to assume that every creature will always be a 1/1 for this math. If you get an anthem creature you probably double those numbers but this is also assuming a lot of things. This assumes that the creature you cast this buff on can connect and that you are not losing these creatures in the attack as well. It requires you to connect to someone every time with the enchanted creature and for the most part for your creatures to not be running into big 6/6 creatures and culling your numbers combat after combat. I don't really like making the "dies to removal" argument but this is a 4 mana aura that requires us to be able to mostly clean swing into people and not eat spot removal, get blocked, or encounter anyone with a maze effect. I have some concerns with the complexity in using this effect because there are so many moving pieces and it just feels like it needs to come up with kind of this perfect storm of situations for it to come through and work.
Sadistic Hypnotist - Even if he was a vampire, I think the bar is fairly high for 4+ mana cards for this list. If it was a vampire I hesitantly might try to make it work but ultimately I don't know if it is good enough. I think its a cool card but I think it fits better in a more controlling type of token deck and or a deck that cares more about sacrifice.
Well, more reports. Minions' Murmurs is fantastic. Being able to dump your hand in the first couple turns and then refill was great. I'm surprised how fast and consistent this deck stays. Golden Demise I've concluded is a meta call. It's good for token/swarm and offing utility creatures. Other than that it should probably go. The only other problem I'm seeing atm is the land base needs some tweeking. Having red or white mana right off or when you need it can be really hard sometimes. I'm currently trying to find what would help alleviate this.
Elsewise ISB, deck is awesome and runs well. The others love it and hate it all at the same time. And as a sidenote, Necropotence is a kill on sight/counter now. My playgroups realized the power it brings to the deck and are aware I will jam it asap so it has earn a reputation.
Minions' Murmurs - good to hear. I have not had a chance to play since adding it but it seems like it could do some work.
Golden Demise - Thanks for the feedback. I might end up cutting it myself. I added Mizzium Mortars kind of early in my build progression and I really have not ever seen it or Golden Demise but I have also gone through a lot of changes since adding it. I will see what I can do about replacing it because I have been hearing several questionable reports on the card.
Landbase - hummm its interesting to hear. I have not had many issues myself. I guess in the worst case you can always cull some of the utility land and add more fixing. What does your landbase look like out of curiosity? I am just interested in if you have some budget calls on this front or if you are running something similar to mine.
I am glad to hear that it is working out for you. Necropotence should be kill on sight for most decks but this deck is especially brutal in how it is used.
Heh. I had a game a week or two ago where I dealt 34 damage to myself over the course of the game with Necropotence...won at 4 life--I got hit for damage by someone else at the table one time.
What I've been finding is that in 3-player games, this deck is generally annihilating the table (I've had a few games won turn 6 or 7), but adding that 4th player is just closing me out. Now, I have only had a few games since I added more draw to the deck, so I'm not 100% on this assessment yet, but it does make me a little curious about some of the evaluations I've seen here. Namely, I see a few big effects cards being dismissed as "win more," but I wonder if that's not being hasty. After all, this deck isn't winning with a combo assembled in one turn, and it can go from smashing face to having no board presence and nothing to do after a wrath or two, maybe a counterspell thrown in--I had this exact thing happen to me in a 4-player game. Board got wrathed (I actually have kept Boros Charm as some protection against this), Charmed, then got wrathed by the next player. A turn sequence later, and the angry Omnath deck before me in turn order played out a Greater Good. Seeing that go through, and with no other plays available to me, I put forward Necropotence only for that to eat a counter.
I've had a few games where I've dropped players fairly low before they stabilized/I ran out of gas, and it seems to me like some of the bigger effects that can double up on what we're already doing for an alpha strike could possibly bump up the win percentage. Now, I'm going to give it a few more games to see how all the added draw effects things, but I'm definitely thinking that the deck could benefit from some of the cards that have been labeled "win more" elsewhere in the thread.
This deck is very fast and aggressive so it will generally have advantages to less players. I usually try to avoid using this deck when moving to 5+ players at a table because there is a very real fall off given the extra amount of life and additional answers that will be present at the game. I have not had an issue with playing this deck in a 4 player ffa setting though. There are a lot of small decisions to be made with a deck like this given how quickly it is trying to move and to some degree the longer you pilot it the better you will get at making those decisions. Being that we are a fast aggro deck there is definitely some proficiency in mulligans, tutors, and figuring out when to try to make big moves.
Bigger cost effects - the issue is that it really requires a different mentality in building and playing. The concept of keeping costs low works very well with a high draw presence and moving a lot of cards. Eating a counterspell on necro (or really any draw) hurts probably the most because we need to keep cards moving with this build. To be fair though as well, it seems very odd that a blue player would be ok with Greater Good landing and sticking to the board while keeping counter magic up for the vampire deck. Most of our creatures are very hard to counter because they are cheap and come with free bodies so it seems really suspicious that he would have not moved on Greater Good. I likely would have also read that as an instance where no counter magic was available.
Let us know how things go if you do try to use some of the bigger cards. I am still leery of them in part because I do have access to Edgar Markov in the higher cost anthem buff area.
Can someone please explain how you use Scapegoat? I am guessing it is wrath protection.
PS: I have been playing this deck for weeks now (about 90% exactly the same as ISB's list and 10% my own choices) and Metallic Mimic is definitely worth trying.
Scapegoat - it can be wrath protection but it can also be used for replaying creatures and getting more tokens. What I like is that we have a few more high impact vamps as well as ETB vamps now that it can also allow us to replay their ETB effects. Others have been reporting good things about it and the fact that it costs less to keep up as an option than most other wrath protect effects not to mention having more applications outside of wrath protection made me interested enough to include it in my list.
Metallic Mimic - thanks for the report I will see if I can work it in. I have been hearing several questionable reports on Golden Demise so I might just swap it in there.
Scapegoat is not simply for wrath protection. If you cast it at the end of the turn before yours, and bounce all your cheap, non-token vampires, then you can recast them during your turn for more value. So it serves a double purpose.
The big reason I am willing to put it in and try it out is that there are more applications beyond defense. Drawing a Boros Charm and keeping the mana up / not seeing a wrath the next few turns can be really frustrating. The card also has very few uses outside of wrath defense and even then its very situational based on opponents using traditional wrath of god effects. What if instead they use Tragic Arrogance, Living Death, or Toxic Deluge for instance? I think there are a good number of strong vamps that if played could be worth protecting and or recovering to retrigger ETB effects as well which I think really pushes this card in a good direction that Boros Charm just has a lot more situational feeling about it.
DECK CHANGE:
Golden Demise -> Metallic Mimic I have not really seen Golden Demise and while I think it could have situations its good its kind of reactive and niche. I still have some doubts towards Metallic Mimic but the concepts behind it could work still and its a proactive card rather than reactive. I am going mostly off of the reports you guys bring in here as to why I am making this swap but I have heard a few reports of Golden Demise being awkward now and the concept behind Metallic Mimic could work.
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The other downside to Coat is memory. If its vampire cleric, vampire rouge, vampire soldier, the subtypes come into play, then you have to find out what else is in play from other folks creature types that buffs them as well. Its why I never considered it in my edh ally deck. SOOO many memory issues on sooo many common types. Way more hassle than its worth. Cathars crusade is much better since all you have to do is remember the trigger per ETB.
Stupid thing maybe, but do you have enough devotion to black to use Grey Merchant as a secondary Malikar Bloodwitch? Looking through the list seems you might, but list VS actual play can greatly differ
Cathar's Crusade has its own issues which tend to be that its incredibly slow to build up. It might be reasonable to cast it plus a vamp in the same turn but beyond that you would be looking at a very late game move before you could play it + multiple vamps in a turn.
Gary maybe... the downside is still going to be that any of our vampires that we cast count as two vamps for Bloodwitch which is really strong. Even with a stronger prevalence of black vamps I still think that Gary would probably only hit like.... half as hard if that not to mention that he is not really furthering our vampire board. I guess I see some issues with him offhand is kind of where I stand. I feel like you might just get further off of like Price of Progress or Sulfuric Vortex. While I think the lifegain on Malakir Bloodwitch is strong, I run it more for the life reduction to my opponents so when you look at an effect that is maybe half as strong for the same mana I think its valid to ask if going cheaper and just dishing out a ton of damage is better.
I've been thinking this over too. Really just mulling over the idea, as Malakir Bloodwitch is a strong ETB trigger and it'd be nice to have other variations of this ability at hand that are reasonably priced or on curve. It's not a vampire, but what are your thoughts around Vizkopa Guildmage? If it were a vampire, it'd be a shoe in, but even as is, it does synergize quite well with a lot of the cards you're running here: Pros
-Following Malakir Bloodwitch in the same turn, its second ability will win you the game.
-Following a sweeper or Goblin Bombardment with Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat in play, its a heavy gouging for your opponents.
-Early game Serra Ascendant?
-Swinging with Sanctum Seeker and stacking the second ability.
-Hasty abilities
-You can stack the abilities up as a mana sink.
-Cheap to cast. Cons
-Not a vampire.
-Mana we'd otherwise use for casting vamps, I guess.
I think it's worthy of consideration personally, I'll probably try him in my list. This guy could win games out of nowhere.
I've been thinking this over too. Really just mulling over the idea, as Malakir Bloodwitch is a strong ETB trigger and it'd be nice to have other variations of this ability at hand that are reasonably priced or on curve. It's not a vampire, but what are your thoughts around Vizkopa Guildmage? If it were a vampire, it'd be a shoe in, but even as is, it does synergize quite well with a lot of the cards you're running here: Pros
-Following Malakir Bloodwitch in the same turn, its second ability will win you the game.
-Following a sweeper or Goblin Bombardment with Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat in play, its a heavy gouging for your opponents.
-Early game Serra Ascendant?
-Swinging with Sanctum Seeker and stacking the second ability.
-Hasty abilities
-You can stack the abilities up as a mana sink.
-Cheap to cast. Cons
-Not a vampire.
-Mana we'd otherwise use for casting vamps, I guess.
I think it's worthy of consideration personally, I'll probably try him in my list. This guy could win games out of nowhere.
I would probably have to try to play Gary in here to have a better feel for it but I often use Malakir Bloodwitch in the 6-10 vamp count range and the fact that it counts for two itself has been fairly huge. Most of the vampires in here are black but I won't get any gary value off of tokens and there are still nonblack cards in this deck that won't count as any devotion. Traditionally Gary is played a little more in reanimator decks where the chance to Corpse Dance loop him or some other terrible thing can occur as well. Overall I guess I feel like 4-5 devotion would be about where he would probably fall more frequently for this deck. In most cases I think its probably still a bit optimistic to assume he might be as strong as Zulaport Cutthroat (who is a 2 drop).
Vizkopa Guildmage - if it was a vampire I think I would rate it as kind of weak card to include. I think its abilities are ultimately kind of weak for this deck and mostly the only thing I would try to do would be to use the second ability paired with Malakir Bloodwitch. I think that paying an extra three mana on top of Malakir Bloodwitch is already asking a lot which is why I think it would be a little questionable. It would be a 2/2 vamp for BW that lacks evasion and I would primarily treat it as a vanilla vampire 95% of the time. It would be tempting but the times in which it might be good would be winmore and outside of those times its not a very good card.
Completely unrelated.... I was eying Burn at the Stake as an interesting card in that it offers a very explosive hit to someone's face. It is really hard to interact with as you tap the creatures as part of casting it so there is no real room for any removal other than counterspells or some really niche redirect / protect effect to stop it. The flip side argument though is that it does not interact very well with any of the buffs and it competes in a similar mana slot as the commander and I really don't like this card until you approach or pass 10 creatures in play at which point you can really bully people with a lot of different cards including Edgar Markov. It could be an interesting means to get past a swarm of guys or Propaganda effects but ultimately I think I would still say that its too niche.
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I've been thinking this over too. Really just mulling over the idea, as Malakir Bloodwitch is a strong ETB trigger and it'd be nice to have other variations of this ability at hand that are reasonably priced or on curve. It's not a vampire, but what are your thoughts around Vizkopa Guildmage? If it were a vampire, it'd be a shoe in, but even as is, it does synergize quite well with a lot of the cards you're running here: Pros
-Following Malakir Bloodwitch in the same turn, its second ability will win you the game.
-Following a sweeper or Goblin Bombardment with Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat in play, its a heavy gouging for your opponents.
-Early game Serra Ascendant?
-Swinging with Sanctum Seeker and stacking the second ability.
-Hasty abilities
-You can stack the abilities up as a mana sink.
-Cheap to cast. Cons
-Not a vampire.
-Mana we'd otherwise use for casting vamps, I guess.
I think it's worthy of consideration personally, I'll probably try him in my list. This guy could win games out of nowhere.
I would probably have to try to play Gary in here to have a better feel for it but I often use Malakir Bloodwitch in the 6-10 vamp count range and the fact that it counts for two itself has been fairly huge. Most of the vampires in here are black but I won't get any gary value off of tokens and there are still nonblack cards in this deck that won't count as any devotion. Traditionally Gary is played a little more in reanimator decks where the chance to Corpse Dance loop him or some other terrible thing can occur as well. Overall I guess I feel like 4-5 devotion would be about where he would probably fall more frequently for this deck. In most cases I think its probably still a bit optimistic to assume he might be as strong as Zulaport Cutthroat (who is a 2 drop).
Vizkopa Guildmage - if it was a vampire I think I would rate it as kind of weak card to include. I think its abilities are ultimately kind of weak for this deck and mostly the only thing I would try to do would be to use the second ability paired with Malakir Bloodwitch. I think that paying an extra three mana on top of Malakir Bloodwitch is already asking a lot which is why I think it would be a little questionable. It would be a 2/2 vamp for BW that lacks evasion and I would primarily treat it as a vanilla vampire 95% of the time. It would be tempting but the times in which it might be good would be winmore and outside of those times its not a very good card.
Completely unrelated.... I was eying Burn at the Stake as an interesting card in that it offers a very explosive hit to someone's face. It is really hard to interact with as you tap the creatures as part of casting it so there is no real room for any removal other than counterspells or some really niche redirect / protect effect to stop it. The flip side argument though is that it does not interact very well with any of the buffs and it competes in a similar mana slot as the commander and I really don't like this card until you approach or pass 10 creatures in play at which point you can really bully people with a lot of different cards including Edgar Markov. It could be an interesting means to get past a swarm of guys or Propaganda effects but ultimately I think I would still say that its too niche.
I agree regarding Gary. Your devotion is anything but certain, and 3BB is a lot to pay for something that's not a sure thing. Vizkopa yeah I guess is fairly conditional too. It's not necessarily something this deck is built to do, it's merely something that takes advantage of coincidental card choices. And the price of 1BW per activation is a little steep for the deck. Would you consider something like Gruesome Fate instead? Again, it could be winmore and could completely flop. The fact that it takes advantage of your swarm and affects each opponent could make it of reasonable value though. Could be helpful if combat doesn't look favourable.
Burn at the Stake is pretty explosive. I can't see playing it myself. Sure, you take one opponent out decisively - there's no point playing the card otherwise. It also leaves you open to other opponents though. 2RRR plus tapping your creatures is a difficult cost to stomach to my mind.
I agree regarding Gary. Your devotion is anything but certain, and 3BB is a lot to pay for something that's not a sure thing. Vizkopa yeah I guess is fairly conditional too. It's not necessarily something this deck is built to do, it's merely something that takes advantage of coincidental card choices. And the price of 1BW per activation is a little steep for the deck. Would you consider something like Gruesome Fate instead? Again, it could be winmore and could completely flop. The fact that it takes advantage of your swarm and affects each opponent could make it of reasonable value though. Could be helpful if combat doesn't look favourable.
Burn at the Stake is pretty explosive. I can't see playing it myself. Sure, you take one opponent out decisively - there's no point playing the card otherwise. It also leaves you open to other opponents though. 2RRR plus tapping your creatures is a difficult cost to stomach to my mind.
I had already forgotten about Gruesome Fate lol. It is probably stronger given that it hits each opponent even if it is for less it does not tap them and it hits each opponent not to mention being cheaper and easier to cast. I probably wont move to run either of them for now but they make for some interesting thought.
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It does have the downsides of not generating a vampire, a creature, instant, or easily recurrable. I guess it depends how badly you want another iteration of that Malakir Bloodwitch trigger.
Edit: out of interest, I searched for other iterations of this kind of effect. There's nothing on a creature, let alone a vampire. There is: Harsh sustenance Massive Raid Mob Justice Battle Hymn...I guess. R is probably less useful than B here anyway.
As to the mana base I'm running ISB, its your list card for card. I don't have any budget limitations as I have most of the cards. Specially the older stuff. Just jamming your list till I get some rebuilds done on my other decks. So I thought I would try yours out and help with the feedback.
Foul-Tongue Shriek might also be used for similar purposes.. though dependent on the amount of attackers and again only single target.. you can swing one player and hit another with this.. also it's on attack, so don't need to connect either.. ^^
Could potentially be useful - only B to play and it's an instant. Not the worst option, definitely better than the Bishop.
I don't know toc, but I actually like your Vizkopa Guildmage idea. Sure, it's not a vampire, but it is low cmc with an awesome 2nd ability, and IT'S THAT'S STACKABLE. I have 9 life gainers in my version, not counting Vizkopa or Crypt Ghast, which i probably should have in the deck anyways; and then if we include the 1-drop Children of Korlis (which is also a non-vampire, lol) we have an awesome game-ender using Necropotence. Just thinking outside the box guys.
But the card I really wanted to mention is Fervent Charge. I don't remember seeing this in our discussion before. Since we've pretty much discounted all the other non-creature permanent buffs, and even Homura is too unwieldy for me, I thought this might fit the curve. I haven't played it yet, so I'm not sure. I would guess you'd have to have a good manabase to be able to use it though.
I don't toc, but I actually like your Vizkopa Guildmage idea. Sure, it's not a vampire, but it is low cmc with an awesome 2nd ability. I have 9 life gainers in my version, not counting Vizkopa or Crypt Ghast, which i probably should have in the deck anyways; and then if we include the 1-drop Children of Korlis (which is also a non-vampire, lol) we have an awesome game-ender using Necropotence. Just thinking outside the box guys.
Yeah, it has possibilities. I haven't played the deck in a while, so I'm not sure how often a massive lifegain happens in my current iteration. If it's often, there might be a slot free. Otherwise, I might be happy to entertain some of the life loss instant/sorceries we've discussed to date. Gruesome Fate I can see ending games out of nowhere, although I'd be happier if it were instant speed.
But the card I really wanted to mention is Fervent Charge. I don't remember seeing this in our discussion before. Since we've pretty much discounted all the other non-creature permanent buffs, and even Homura is too unwieldy for me, I thought this might fit the curve. I haven't played it yet, so I'm not sure. I would guess you'd have to have a good manabase to be able to color fix for it though.
It's not bad. I don't like the mana cost, but then my manabase is nowhere near as tuned as ISB's. I can see it fitting in some builds, just probably not mine.
Played some games last Thursday again and came into conclusion that this deck needs evasion after all. Evasion and Haste. Yes - after getting wrathed and mass-bounced few times I so desperately craved for Haste that I tutored for Bloodghast to connect immidiately. That's why I began to consider adding Anger and Filth to the list along with Entomb and Faithless Looting. What do you think?
The great thing about Anger and Filth is that you don't need to cast them. So they can have a cost of whatever and it's not a problem. If you run Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth then Filth becomes broken (it's what I use in my Sidisi deck). With so many wheels it'd be very easy to get them in the graveyard, too.
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I can definitely see a place for haste here. Anger is a solid choice. I run Hammer of Purphoros predominantly because I don't have a copy of the aforementioned.
How are you finding Twilight Prophet? It's very expensive at present, trying my best to justify not paying for it. I mean it seems an additional draw per turn, not much more.
How are you finding Twilight Prophet? It's very expensive at present, trying my best to justify not paying for it. I mean it seems an additional draw per turn, not much more.
I traded for it last night so I haven't had a chance to pilot the deck since changes. I worked on an Azami, Lady of Scrolls deck while I was waiting to get what I needed through trades. That finally culminated last night in the trade for the Prophet and Champ. I will definitely report back my experiences with the card but it replaced Falkkenrath Noble in my deck as a straight 1:1 ratio of mana (only difference being BB2 vs B3) and while it was nice to have a redundant albeit more expensive Blood Artist I have found through experience that the Artist alone in the deck is sufficient. So my expectations are high for the Twilight Prophet because triggering Ascend is a turn three yawn for this deck and her ability is just bonkers.
I agree Ascend is easy to hit, I just don't think her ability is bonkers. It's a slightly better Dark Confidant effect. The extra draw is good, don't get me wrong. I just don't ever expect to have an opponent lose more than 2-3 life from the reveal, likewise with the gain. And that's simply because of the curve here, most of our vamps are bargain basement CMC.
The best case scenario for life gain/loss ability is Malakir Bloodwitch, but it's also worst case scenario in another aspect. Great card to hit, but the last thing I want to do is reveal that I have it in hand, because it's totally capable of ending the game on the spot. I definitely don't want to give anyone an opportunity to counter it.
I dunno, I don't think you always plan around worst case scenarios, but I also don't think it's the greatest card available for the deck. I may be overthinking it, but I'm still quite happy to wait for a drop in price before I grab it myself.
Metallic Mimic doesn't generate a token off of Edgar Markov. Mimic's creature type is triggered on its ETB trigger so it misses Edgar's cast trigger. Mimic also requires to be played before other vampires. So drawing it after turn 2 means you lose a lot of it's power. I think these are the reasons it isn't in ISBPathfinder's list.
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When I started playing vampires I had a much higher curve and I played arround with more of those type of cards. As time went on I wanted to push my count high my curve low and anything that is not a vampire I try to keep cheap and fast. It has just been a lot smoother with the card draw engines I run. So many of those cards have a lot of situations where they are only so so or depend on what your opponents are doing that I found myself sitting on them for too much time. Even though the evasion stuff is not strong hitting its cheap and I can cast it whenever and it is fairly good where as I found a lot of these hard hitting effects to be situational based on how many attackers I have, how many defenders my opponents have, what kind of creatures they have and so on.
The more cards that we run that are just generally good all of the time and can be multi cast with other cards the better our draw engines become. It is the mentality that I have taken on for this list and it has been working for me. I am not saying that those cards cant work but I found a lot of them to be slow and kind of situational based on what opponents are doing.
Yea, coat of arms is really questionable given that it benefits opponents too. Its possible still if you can out swarm them but man it would be bad if they live through the first turn and overcame our numbers. I found myself sitting with it rotting in hand too many times when I did run it early on. It is valid to say though that I am heavier swarm now than when I originally ran it so its possible that the lower and faster curve could make better use of it but I still have a lot of issues with it from the standpoint that any turn that I untap with a shedload of vamps in play and 5+ mana is probably a good game for me anyways.
Its possible to get it to work but I like to think of it from this perspective, what if we go into a wrath heavy game where it becomes a lot more questioable to play it. Things like Malakir Bloodwitch can have a similar damage output (given you have to assume there are some amount of blockers). Lets assume you have 8 vamps and get to cast Malakir Bloodwitch (you jump up to 10 vamps and syphon 30 life). In the other case of Coat of Arms you jump to probably around 64 damage worth of output and possibly bludgeon 1 player down (getting a second is probably questionable given blockers between two players). Now in this case you killed a player (probably) with COA unless of course they had several blockers or some sort of defense. My issue with Coat of Arms though is it kind of plays the math with what if I have a crazy out of control board of creatures and my opponent has nothing. What if that opponent has a Propaganda now.... well now you did no damage to them because you cant afford to attack with anything + play Coat of Arms. What if the player you want to attack has a Naturalize and pops it as you attack? What if that player is a token deck and has tokens set up already?
My issue with Coat of Arms and big expensive cards like it is that it assumes that the player you are trying to kill have nothing set up and no answers. I cant tell you the last time that my biggest concern was some defenseless player who has nothing in play and no way to interact with me. It is possible that they are some sort of glass cannon combo deck I guess but in that case I feel like everyone at the table is probably trying to kill them anyways and playing a non combo aggro deck with few answers vs a glass cannon combo seems like a bad matchup anyways.
This is all assuming we are in a good situation too when we get up to the mana to cast something like this. There is always the chance we play against a sweeper based deck and we have trouble ever getting our numbers up. I don't like paying a lot of mana to try to enable what I hope is a good board when so many things can go wrong with making a big heavy play like that.
Evasion helps keep our board alive while connecting us for damage. You can also buff creatures so that they don't easily trade in combat but I just don't want to spend an entire turn trying to cast a buff that gets me chump blocked if I might otherwise be able to cast 2-4 cards given some good card draw engine. What if you cast some big buff and walk in and get heavily chump blocked and kill nobody and then the next person uses a Naturalize on your expensive buff? Part of the reason to run cheap cards is so you can multi cast this stuff and it makes spot removal a lot worse.
Grasp of Fate hits any nonland meaning it can hit artifacts / enchantments / creatures / planeswalkers. It also hits one for each opponent where as Crib Swap hits a single creature and gives them a chump blocker that potentially offsets the vampire you get from it especially considering they can block that turn with the token you give them but you cant attack that turn with the vampire you make. An opponent could shut us down with a variety of cards that are not always creatures so having the diversity in removal makes you less susceptible to some random effect like Propaganda shutting down our attack options.
With running a lighter removal suite I put more priority in being able to be versatile in what I remove. There is also a lot more tempo in the concept of removing a permenant from each opponent than there is in removing a single creature from one opponent. If you don't care for Grasp of Fate I could also see Chaos Warp, Vindicate, or Utter End also being options but I doubt I would resort to creature only spot removal. Keep in mind that with this type of deck you really don't want to be trying to disrupt opponents gameplans with removal so much as responding to things that will cause you to lose the game or keep you from playing the game you want with spot removal. Value the ability to target what you need to remove and or when you need the removal over trying to get some sort of tempo / disruption play. If you see a lot of combo it may also be relevant to move to Swords to Plowshares / Disenchant type effects but I would do that more reactionary based on if that is what your meta plays.
Metallic Mimic - I think its ok and if its something you want to play its probably ok. It does not give a vampire when it is cast though as it does not become a vampire until it is in play and that is a lot of the reason I don't play it because I think its actually weak on curve so its not very good until you have a lot of vampires in play already. In this sense I think its a bad card to curve play as a two drop or even as your turn three play and I don't run it because of that. Its something I would not cast until I essentially exhaust my hand of vampires.
Goblin Bombardment vs Impact Tremors - most of this comes down to the fact that Impact Tremors needs to be played before a bunch of guys but Goblin Bombardment can be played after them. With Goblin Bombardment we can control the board and use creatures as removal and we don't need to draw it before we blow our hand. impact tremors can still be a very strong card and I did run it for a while but my issue was that it needed to hit play and stick for some amount of time to get its value back. I saw multiple times where it would die in the first turn or two of me playing it not to mention times where I might draw it late in a game where it became a little worse due to that. Goblin Bombardment is a little weaker at hitting players for damage but I like it because it can be played after I play a swarm of creatures and its value is strong at that point and it gets its value back potentially quicker than Impact Tremors does if you expect both of them to possibly be quickly answered. If you expect either one to live a long time then yea Impact Tremors is great but I found that I was getting the value back from Goblin Bombardment faster than Impact Tremors because of the fact that I could play it after I play a swarm of guys rather than needing to cast a bunch of dudes after casting it.
Considering how proactively we are trying to play out a swarm of bodies with this deck anything that you can cast after having a swarm of guys rather than needing to have in play before you cast a swarm of guys is going to be a bit stronger. Bloodlord of Vaasgoth is a good example of this in that he wants to be played when you already have creatures in play and can attack and then he makes your next creatures good but he also costs a lot of mana and a board before you play him for him to be maximized. I played with him early on and I quickly realized that he was far too slow because of the fact that he cost a lot of mana but he was only trying to make future plays stronger rather than what you already had in play better so in that sense he was incredibly slow.
Yea, its downfall is mostly tied to the fact that it gives no token. Not getting that token makes it so much weaker than the vampire anthems. I still think its probably not that bad if someone wants to run it. I just don't think its quite good enough without getting that token too.
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[Modern] Allies
Stupid thing maybe, but do you have enough devotion to black to use Grey Merchant as a secondary Malikar Bloodwitch? Looking through the list seems you might, but list VS actual play can greatly differ
Cathar's Crusade has its own issues which tend to be that its incredibly slow to build up. It might be reasonable to cast it plus a vamp in the same turn but beyond that you would be looking at a very late game move before you could play it + multiple vamps in a turn.
Gary maybe... the downside is still going to be that any of our vampires that we cast count as two vamps for Bloodwitch which is really strong. Even with a stronger prevalence of black vamps I still think that Gary would probably only hit like.... half as hard if that not to mention that he is not really furthering our vampire board. I guess I see some issues with him offhand is kind of where I stand. I feel like you might just get further off of like Price of Progress or Sulfuric Vortex. While I think the lifegain on Malakir Bloodwitch is strong, I run it more for the life reduction to my opponents so when you look at an effect that is maybe half as strong for the same mana I think its valid to ask if going cheaper and just dishing out a ton of damage is better.
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[Modern] Allies
I do like the syphon effects of this deck, and have been looking at another RIX card no one has mentioned yet, Tilonalli's Summoner. Yeah, I know, it's not a vampire, and it doesn't do much the turn it comes out; so it's probably crap for this build. But it is cheap and the tokens it can produce (next turn) interact quite well with Purphoros, and various other syphon/sac effects, and even more when Mirror Entity is out. It would seem to be a good recovery card from a board wipe. Our card list is tight, and I'm not thinking this can make the cut, but any comments on this card?
Also, more importantly, I'm trying to decide if we can work Breath of Fury into this deck. I've used this with great success in other red aggro decks, and dropped with Animosity and just a few 1/1's even without evasion it can be a game ender. A quick basic math calculation with just 6 vanilla 1/1's and Breath/Animosity on board, we generate 138 points of unblocked damage after only 3 attack phases. Especially useful after a board wipe, with many of the syphon/buff/counter/sac options we employ. Your thoughts?
Oh, and the last card I really would have liked to cram into this deck... Sadistic Hypnotist. To bad he isn't a vampire.
Elsewise ISB, deck is awesome and runs well. The others love it and hate it all at the same time. And as a sidenote, Necropotence is a kill on sight/counter now. My playgroups realized the power it brings to the deck and are aware I will jam it asap so it has earn a reputation.
GVorinclex, Voice of HungerG
WUBMerieke Ri BeritWUB
UBRNekusar, the MindrazerUBR
GWUBAtraxa, Praetors' VoiceGWUB
What I've been finding is that in 3-player games, this deck is generally annihilating the table (I've had a few games won turn 6 or 7), but adding that 4th player is just closing me out. Now, I have only had a few games since I added more draw to the deck, so I'm not 100% on this assessment yet, but it does make me a little curious about some of the evaluations I've seen here. Namely, I see a few big effects cards being dismissed as "win more," but I wonder if that's not being hasty. After all, this deck isn't winning with a combo assembled in one turn, and it can go from smashing face to having no board presence and nothing to do after a wrath or two, maybe a counterspell thrown in--I had this exact thing happen to me in a 4-player game. Board got wrathed (I actually have kept Boros Charm as some protection against this), Charmed, then got wrathed by the next player. A turn sequence later, and the angry Omnath deck before me in turn order played out a Greater Good. Seeing that go through, and with no other plays available to me, I put forward Necropotence only for that to eat a counter.
I've had a few games where I've dropped players fairly low before they stabilized/I ran out of gas, and it seems to me like some of the bigger effects that can double up on what we're already doing for an alpha strike could possibly bump up the win percentage. Now, I'm going to give it a few more games to see how all the added draw effects things, but I'm definitely thinking that the deck could benefit from some of the cards that have been labeled "win more" elsewhere in the thread.
PS: I have been playing this deck for weeks now (about 90% exactly the same as ISB's list and 10% my own choices) and Metallic Mimic is definitely worth trying.
Scapegoat is not simply for wrath protection. If you cast it at the end of the turn before yours, and bounce all your cheap, non-token vampires, then you can recast them during your turn for more value. So it serves a double purpose.
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Obelisk of Urd I actually came somewhat close to testing it once or twice. I guess the question comes down to how much you end up needing to pay for it. I think I might have overly been concerned about the cost when it would come up with Bob or Ad Naus but I think more realistically the big concern with a 6 cost spell is paying 6 mana for it. I think there is a real decent chance that you can probably cast 2 vampires for probably 3-4 mana and then use those plus a little more mana to push this out. Being averse to something cost a lot of mana for me is a lot more about the amount of resource and how much of my turn it takes. I do think that +2/+2 is a solid buff but I think the big question is how much of a turn it really takes. You really don't need blockers all that often with this deck because you are hitting harder than most so using summoning sick creatures and tokens to power out an anthem is something I could totally see. Because of the direction of this build I can totally see a card like this being a lot more impressive than Dictate of Heliod because I think it probably is fairly likely that you could cast 2 creatures + this in a turn. I think that worry about Ad Naus / Bob for how hard they hit us with 6 drops is probably not the end of the world as long as our overall average is still reasonable but more realistic if you have some power draw going a bunch of 6 drops can be very hard to juggle and get cast. I like to ask myself the queston of how cards will look if I am drawing 5-7 cards a turn (kind of my average necropotence with this deck) and in a lot of cases I don't like justifying the mana for big splashy effects. I think this card does get past that in a better way.
Homura, Human Ascendant - if you can reliably flip this guy.... absolutely run him. I ran him in my first version of the deck and he was really cool but that list also did not swarm nearly as well in that build (but it did have more sac outlets). I found him to bring a huge target on me and if he is hard to flip as well, he just seems clunky to pay 6 to cast out and see how things shape up on their own.
Dictate of Heliod - It costs a lot of mana and I don't think it does enough. Eldrazi Monument is probably a better card and I think Obelisk of Urd is another card with a lot more potential as well. My big concern with big splashy effects comes back to finding the time to cast them if things are going well. It might be kind of a strange philosophy to go off of how does my deck work when its doing well but with a low curve design like this, the deck probably is not doing so well if you cant find any of your draw so while if you are doing poorly expensive cards might function better... these expensive cards get clogged up and or discarded if you are doing well which I think makes it an odd design decision to run them. I also like to ask myself what if this is in my opening hand or what if I found this type of card in multiple at the same time and ultimately I have moved to a lower curve with cards that I feel have a more positive outcome at all phases of the game rather than come splashy cards that if they land at just the right time they might be good.
Academy Rector - I ran it in the earlier build as well when I had more sac outlets. Without having more sac outlets though it just doesn't quite do it for me.
Ranger of Eos - I did the math and the mana to cast it just did not add up. It depends a little on if there are specific one drops that you really want and while I could probably make some arguments that Serra Ascendant / Shadow Alley Denizen and a few other one drops are fairly sweet cards most of the issue is that I can not really justify the 3W for a non vampire creature that really does not fit the gameplan well. It comes down to how much you value any specific vampire but I ultimately decided that I did not value any one specific one drop all that much and that I was more interested in seeing a quantity of cards for as little mana as I could pay than I was in tutoring and toolboxing into the one drop slot. If I valued the body he comes on more or the tutor itself I could see it but as it was I saw him as more of a draw 2 effect for 4 mana. It could work but I just did not see enough cards to hand for the mana he costs which is why I excluded him.
Minions' Murmurs I have not played with the card myself yet but I think on average, as soon as I can draw 5+ cards with this card I think I am good to pull the trigger. I have not played with it yet myself but like I was saying with Ranger, in most cases I just want sheer numbers of cards. I run tutors to get very specific cards from my deck (usually necropotence and possibly a finisher) but most of the draw in this deck is just interested in throughput of draw given how many cards you draw and how much mana you have to pay to get it.
Overall I also have some reluctance to add some big splashy buff in part because we always have Edgar Markov in our command zone that could also be used for that exact same thing. Some of these cards might have more impact than casting him but there is also the fact that we always have access to him that gives some amount of consistency that makes me question big 5+ mana non vamp buffs. He is also a snowballing buff in that the longer he sticks the bigger the buff he is going to give and while he might not snowball as big or give as much stats as some of the others, having him in the command zone gives him some consistency that I don't see the need to add competition to that mana spot for. It might be true that if you time one of these effects just right you might have some horrible huge snowball victory but there tend to also be a lot of times that drawing those cards are wrong too and one advantage of relying a little more on Edgar Markov in that slot is that we have the constant access and don't have to draw him at the wrong times.
Thanks, I try to do what I can. This thread explodes so often sometimes its a pain in the ass to keep up with lol. I am always interested to hear how things are working out for others too as in a lot of cases I am just trying to hear what is working / not working with others and see what I can do to make it work better.
Shared Animosity / Scapegoat - I recently brought Shared Animosity back into my list and I picked up Scapegoat as well after a lot of discussion about it in the thread.
Cloudstone Curio - I ran it early on but I cut it in part given how mana intensive it is to try to set up and execute in one turn. It felt a little slow to generate its value and I had a hard time hanging on to one drops for a 4+ mana play. Ultimately it seemed bad when I had access to good draw as well because it is a mana sink but it does not play well with also having a lot of cards. In a sense it is sort of like an alternative to having draw in that you can use few cards to generate more bodies without actually drawing into more.
Stensia Masquerade its ok. Its sort of like Rakish Heir with a little more buffing but it is not a vampire itself and does not come with an extra token. First strike can help vs utility creatures and tokens so I think its ok. It is a little slow to buff but I think ultimately its ok.
Mirror Entity my biggest issue is that it actively takes mana to be any sort of an anthem. The turn you drop it can be a little mana intensive as well to try to have immediate impact and to buff your creatures as you are already looking at 5+ mana to have a general buff. I cut it because of this as I felt like if I actually was getting a lot of cards flowing it just felt like it was too mana intensive to add up. It has some good potential if you can slow roll it behind a bunch of tokens and keep it for a turn or more but I just felt like it was kind of an all in and wait sort of a creature considering the turn it hits play it actually does not have very good impact. I suppose it comes down to a question of if opponents can answer it or not which is a valid reason to consider running something but I also like having a little more immediate return in most cases which is why I opted to move on from it.
Tilonalli's Summoner I felt it was a little fragile and had a lot of what if aimed towards it being drawn and played early on. What if you draw into it on turn 6 instead of curving it? It also requires itself to get to attacking to make the tokens so it has a full turn where it is not active and even when it does attack, its very fragile with no natural evasion of its own so in that sense why run it over say Secure the Wastes or Tempt with Vengeance which have less forecast knowledge for opponents and are a little harder to respond to. You open yourself up to a turn where you are forecasting your next move and opponents get a full turn to respond and ready themselves in which they could spot remove or wrath. The question in my mind is in what situation do you see yourself using this card? It is very mana intensive to use the token making ability which does not mesh well with having heavy card draw. It is far better for this type of build to have low cost cards that keep doing things and generating value that do not have a mana cost to maintain them. A good analogy of what I am talking about would be to look at Greed. The effect of this card is something that I really do want but the upfront cost of 3B and then the cost of B for every card I want is too mana intensive. I want to on general draw more cards than I pay mana for as a basis of how much I want to pay per draw. Whenever you are paying mana into an ability that comes away from your ability to play more cards. Necropotence is completely busted in this deck because we can easily move 5 cards a turn with this deck because of our low curve and the fact that it does not require mana per draw is exactly what breaks it for this list.
Breath of Fury it could work. Lets do a little math quick. I am going to disregard any blockers in this math and assume them all to be 1/1s for simplicity:
So, obviously its a little silly to assume that every creature will always be a 1/1 for this math. If you get an anthem creature you probably double those numbers but this is also assuming a lot of things. This assumes that the creature you cast this buff on can connect and that you are not losing these creatures in the attack as well. It requires you to connect to someone every time with the enchanted creature and for the most part for your creatures to not be running into big 6/6 creatures and culling your numbers combat after combat. I don't really like making the "dies to removal" argument but this is a 4 mana aura that requires us to be able to mostly clean swing into people and not eat spot removal, get blocked, or encounter anyone with a maze effect. I have some concerns with the complexity in using this effect because there are so many moving pieces and it just feels like it needs to come up with kind of this perfect storm of situations for it to come through and work.
Sadistic Hypnotist - Even if he was a vampire, I think the bar is fairly high for 4+ mana cards for this list. If it was a vampire I hesitantly might try to make it work but ultimately I don't know if it is good enough. I think its a cool card but I think it fits better in a more controlling type of token deck and or a deck that cares more about sacrifice.
Minions' Murmurs - good to hear. I have not had a chance to play since adding it but it seems like it could do some work.
Golden Demise - Thanks for the feedback. I might end up cutting it myself. I added Mizzium Mortars kind of early in my build progression and I really have not ever seen it or Golden Demise but I have also gone through a lot of changes since adding it. I will see what I can do about replacing it because I have been hearing several questionable reports on the card.
Landbase - hummm its interesting to hear. I have not had many issues myself. I guess in the worst case you can always cull some of the utility land and add more fixing. What does your landbase look like out of curiosity? I am just interested in if you have some budget calls on this front or if you are running something similar to mine.
I am glad to hear that it is working out for you. Necropotence should be kill on sight for most decks but this deck is especially brutal in how it is used.
This deck is very fast and aggressive so it will generally have advantages to less players. I usually try to avoid using this deck when moving to 5+ players at a table because there is a very real fall off given the extra amount of life and additional answers that will be present at the game. I have not had an issue with playing this deck in a 4 player ffa setting though. There are a lot of small decisions to be made with a deck like this given how quickly it is trying to move and to some degree the longer you pilot it the better you will get at making those decisions. Being that we are a fast aggro deck there is definitely some proficiency in mulligans, tutors, and figuring out when to try to make big moves.
Bigger cost effects - the issue is that it really requires a different mentality in building and playing. The concept of keeping costs low works very well with a high draw presence and moving a lot of cards. Eating a counterspell on necro (or really any draw) hurts probably the most because we need to keep cards moving with this build. To be fair though as well, it seems very odd that a blue player would be ok with Greater Good landing and sticking to the board while keeping counter magic up for the vampire deck. Most of our creatures are very hard to counter because they are cheap and come with free bodies so it seems really suspicious that he would have not moved on Greater Good. I likely would have also read that as an instance where no counter magic was available.
Let us know how things go if you do try to use some of the bigger cards. I am still leery of them in part because I do have access to Edgar Markov in the higher cost anthem buff area.
Scapegoat - it can be wrath protection but it can also be used for replaying creatures and getting more tokens. What I like is that we have a few more high impact vamps as well as ETB vamps now that it can also allow us to replay their ETB effects. Others have been reporting good things about it and the fact that it costs less to keep up as an option than most other wrath protect effects not to mention having more applications outside of wrath protection made me interested enough to include it in my list.
Metallic Mimic - thanks for the report I will see if I can work it in. I have been hearing several questionable reports on Golden Demise so I might just swap it in there.
The big reason I am willing to put it in and try it out is that there are more applications beyond defense. Drawing a Boros Charm and keeping the mana up / not seeing a wrath the next few turns can be really frustrating. The card also has very few uses outside of wrath defense and even then its very situational based on opponents using traditional wrath of god effects. What if instead they use Tragic Arrogance, Living Death, or Toxic Deluge for instance? I think there are a good number of strong vamps that if played could be worth protecting and or recovering to retrigger ETB effects as well which I think really pushes this card in a good direction that Boros Charm just has a lot more situational feeling about it.
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[Modern] Allies
I've been thinking this over too. Really just mulling over the idea, as Malakir Bloodwitch is a strong ETB trigger and it'd be nice to have other variations of this ability at hand that are reasonably priced or on curve. It's not a vampire, but what are your thoughts around Vizkopa Guildmage? If it were a vampire, it'd be a shoe in, but even as is, it does synergize quite well with a lot of the cards you're running here:
Pros
-Following Malakir Bloodwitch in the same turn, its second ability will win you the game.
-Following a sweeper or Goblin Bombardment with Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat in play, its a heavy gouging for your opponents.
-Early game Serra Ascendant?
-Swinging with Sanctum Seeker and stacking the second ability.
-Hasty abilities
-You can stack the abilities up as a mana sink.
-Cheap to cast.
Cons
-Not a vampire.
-Mana we'd otherwise use for casting vamps, I guess.
I think it's worthy of consideration personally, I'll probably try him in my list. This guy could win games out of nowhere.
I would probably have to try to play Gary in here to have a better feel for it but I often use Malakir Bloodwitch in the 6-10 vamp count range and the fact that it counts for two itself has been fairly huge. Most of the vampires in here are black but I won't get any gary value off of tokens and there are still nonblack cards in this deck that won't count as any devotion. Traditionally Gary is played a little more in reanimator decks where the chance to Corpse Dance loop him or some other terrible thing can occur as well. Overall I guess I feel like 4-5 devotion would be about where he would probably fall more frequently for this deck. In most cases I think its probably still a bit optimistic to assume he might be as strong as Zulaport Cutthroat (who is a 2 drop).
Vizkopa Guildmage - if it was a vampire I think I would rate it as kind of weak card to include. I think its abilities are ultimately kind of weak for this deck and mostly the only thing I would try to do would be to use the second ability paired with Malakir Bloodwitch. I think that paying an extra three mana on top of Malakir Bloodwitch is already asking a lot which is why I think it would be a little questionable. It would be a 2/2 vamp for BW that lacks evasion and I would primarily treat it as a vanilla vampire 95% of the time. It would be tempting but the times in which it might be good would be winmore and outside of those times its not a very good card.
Completely unrelated.... I was eying Burn at the Stake as an interesting card in that it offers a very explosive hit to someone's face. It is really hard to interact with as you tap the creatures as part of casting it so there is no real room for any removal other than counterspells or some really niche redirect / protect effect to stop it. The flip side argument though is that it does not interact very well with any of the buffs and it competes in a similar mana slot as the commander and I really don't like this card until you approach or pass 10 creatures in play at which point you can really bully people with a lot of different cards including Edgar Markov. It could be an interesting means to get past a swarm of guys or Propaganda effects but ultimately I think I would still say that its too niche.
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[Modern] Allies
I agree regarding Gary. Your devotion is anything but certain, and 3BB is a lot to pay for something that's not a sure thing. Vizkopa yeah I guess is fairly conditional too. It's not necessarily something this deck is built to do, it's merely something that takes advantage of coincidental card choices. And the price of 1BW per activation is a little steep for the deck. Would you consider something like Gruesome Fate instead? Again, it could be winmore and could completely flop. The fact that it takes advantage of your swarm and affects each opponent could make it of reasonable value though. Could be helpful if combat doesn't look favourable.
Burn at the Stake is pretty explosive. I can't see playing it myself. Sure, you take one opponent out decisively - there's no point playing the card otherwise. It also leaves you open to other opponents though. 2RRR plus tapping your creatures is a difficult cost to stomach to my mind.
I had already forgotten about Gruesome Fate lol. It is probably stronger given that it hits each opponent even if it is for less it does not tap them and it hits each opponent not to mention being cheaper and easier to cast. I probably wont move to run either of them for now but they make for some interesting thought.
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[Modern] Allies
Edit: out of interest, I searched for other iterations of this kind of effect. There's nothing on a creature, let alone a vampire. There is:
Harsh sustenance
Massive Raid
Mob Justice
Battle Hymn...I guess. R is probably less useful than B here anyway.
GVorinclex, Voice of HungerG
WUBMerieke Ri BeritWUB
UBRNekusar, the MindrazerUBR
GWUBAtraxa, Praetors' VoiceGWUB
Could potentially be useful - only B to play and it's an instant. Not the worst option, definitely better than the Bishop.
But the card I really wanted to mention is Fervent Charge. I don't remember seeing this in our discussion before. Since we've pretty much discounted all the other non-creature permanent buffs, and even Homura is too unwieldy for me, I thought this might fit the curve. I haven't played it yet, so I'm not sure. I would guess you'd have to have a good manabase to be able to use it though.
Yeah, it has possibilities. I haven't played the deck in a while, so I'm not sure how often a massive lifegain happens in my current iteration. If it's often, there might be a slot free. Otherwise, I might be happy to entertain some of the life loss instant/sorceries we've discussed to date. Gruesome Fate I can see ending games out of nowhere, although I'd be happier if it were instant speed.
It's not bad. I don't like the mana cost, but then my manabase is nowhere near as tuned as ISB's. I can see it fitting in some builds, just probably not mine.
The great thing about Anger and Filth is that you don't need to cast them. So they can have a cost of whatever and it's not a problem. If you run Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth then Filth becomes broken (it's what I use in my Sidisi deck). With so many wheels it'd be very easy to get them in the graveyard, too.
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New curve over the 99 is 2.12
Curve over the 65 non-land permanents is 1.39 repeating.
Man I love this deck. Hope you are all sucking the life out of your opponents.
I traded for it last night so I haven't had a chance to pilot the deck since changes. I worked on an Azami, Lady of Scrolls deck while I was waiting to get what I needed through trades. That finally culminated last night in the trade for the Prophet and Champ. I will definitely report back my experiences with the card but it replaced Falkkenrath Noble in my deck as a straight 1:1 ratio of mana (only difference being BB2 vs B3) and while it was nice to have a redundant albeit more expensive Blood Artist I have found through experience that the Artist alone in the deck is sufficient. So my expectations are high for the Twilight Prophet because triggering Ascend is a turn three yawn for this deck and her ability is just bonkers.
The best case scenario for life gain/loss ability is Malakir Bloodwitch, but it's also worst case scenario in another aspect. Great card to hit, but the last thing I want to do is reveal that I have it in hand, because it's totally capable of ending the game on the spot. I definitely don't want to give anyone an opportunity to counter it.
I dunno, I don't think you always plan around worst case scenarios, but I also don't think it's the greatest card available for the deck. I may be overthinking it, but I'm still quite happy to wait for a drop in price before I grab it myself.