I managed to dust this deck off for a game last week. It went well and I think I killed a table of 4 somewhere around turn 7 with it. I almost lost to a Laboratory Maniac / Greater Good from a Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck but I managed to save myself due to a super clutch Blood Seeker which limited his ability to make more tokens. He probably could have gotten there in his last turn if he had more than ten or so hp at the start of the turn.
Metallic Mimic and Oathsworn Vampire were a bit lacking in the game I had. The mimic is VERY noticeable that I don't get the token so even on curve I found it kind of awkward and if you don't frontload the damn card its really bad. Oathsworn is cute but its kind of..... not aggressive enough for me.
Fantastic job with this list! I'm finalizing a similar list and would appreciate some advice. I would like to add a few more vampires if any are viable. If you were to add four of the following vampires with your current manabase, which would you choose? (if i've missed any let me know) Bold Impaler, Falkenrath Gorger, Carrier Thrall, Martyr of Dusk, Vampire Hexmage, Gifted Aetherborn, Kalastria Highborn, Stromkirk Condemned. Also does deathtouch and 3 toughness makes up for gifted aetherborn's lack of reach/first strike?
I almost always like 1 drops more than two drops outside of cases where the two drops are really good. The problem I guess is that the one drops that are left aren't black which makes them harder to cast since I tend to fetch and play a little more black mana than other colors. I have seen a few people play Stromkirk Condemned but its one that seemed a little questionable to me. Of the two drops though I think my preference would be somewhere in the order of:
Stromkirk Condemned my issue with this vampire is that you need a REALLY big board or really good draw going for this ability to really feel relevant enough to me. Like, if I played this on turn two I sort of imagine not really using its ability until I can be attacking with something in the range of 10+ vamps which to me feels a little trappy. It lacks evasion, its stats are not impressive, and its BB to cast for something I feel is a little lacking.
Martyr of Dusk I like that it gives us some rebuilding when it dies and it is really nice if you ever want to be sacing for reach to something like Blood Artist / Goblin Bombardment triggers but it lacks upfront aggressiveness. Its why I have prioritized even just flying 2 drop vampires over this one. Its really not half bad though and it is better if you want to play towards more sac outlets or if you encounter a heavier presence of sweepers. The trade off though is how aggressive it really is on curve though.
Kalastria Highborn My issue with this vampire is that this deck kind of never wants to have any mana up for when you end up losing vamps. The other issue is how dang mana intesinve it is to use this for a swarm based deck. It just isn't an effect that really would work unless you could somehow get and maintain flash so..... its a big trap.
Carrier Thrall This is like a much, much worse Martyr of Dusk in that we care about vampires and not so much a random non vamp token. It still could do some work with purpheros / blood artist but really it gets into more of a non tribal style of sac build where this gets better.
Vampire Hexmage its an answer for walkers mostly but we are a go wide combat deck. I guess my point is that generally I don't worry too much about walkers because I am too busy killing people before they matter. Swing some vamps at the walker if you must or just keep going face. First strike is an.... ok evasion but really they will just put their blocker in front of something else or use something larger. Its not very good evasion and this is an effect I really don't see much need for personally.
Gifted Aetherborn honestly, lifelink is just really low on my priorities and its a BB creature with a low tier evasion. There really are a lot of things I would prioritize over this.
You might prioritize the one drops over these or put them somewhere in the first three priority slots but its kind of hard to tell for me since they don't really have all that relevant of abilities and not being black is a bit of a bummer.
Thank you for the quick and thorough reply! I have a couple of other quick questions as well.
1. How has goblin bombardment performed for you? My impression is that, at only 1 damage per creature, we don’t have enough resources to make it worthwhile.
2. Have you ever had the need to wrath the board yourself? Would there be merit in adding low cost sweepers like toxic deluge or blasphemous act? Or is tutoring for austere command sufficient?
Thank you for the quick and thorough reply! I have a couple of other quick questions as well.
1. How has goblin bombardment performed for you? My impression is that, at only 1 damage per creature, we don’t have enough resources to make it worthwhile.
2. Have you ever had the need to wrath the board yourself? Would there be merit in adding low cost sweepers like toxic deluge or blasphemous act? Or is tutoring for austere command sufficient?
goblin bombardment - Its very versatile. I often don't use my creatures to use this effect unless they are all dying or to reach out and dump damage on one player. The upside of this effect is that we can play this and wait until we need it. It is still fairly useful for killing off utility commanders if need be but for the most part I will fire it up once I get in the range of so many bodies that I expect a wrath at any time and then it gives me a good bit of reach / revenge if someone can wrath me. Sometimes I can get to the point where I can stop someone from acting by the ability to kill them if it comes to that with this sort of effect. One of the things I like about this effect is that it can be set up after I get a bunch of creatures online. I wouldn't say its a top performance card of the deck but its usually been fairly decent for me.
Its rare that I need to wrath creatures in this deck to be honest. Most of the time if I do have to do it I would say its because of something that is keeping me from playing the game like say.... Propaganda / Elesh Norn. For the most part, I only wrath if someone is keeping me from being able to play the game. Austere Command is still fairly solid though given the fact that it can mostly avoid our creatures and having all of the tutors in the list gives me the reach to tutor up that sort of effect if I do get blocked. It is really rare though that someone is being a bigger threat than I am an forcing me to need to wrath them though without somehow also stopping me from playing my deck.
Evasion has been huge for me. To be honest, both pump and evasion on noncreatures can kind of suck in part because you need to get them at the right time and in the right quantity. Part of why I prefer evasion in my noncreatures over pump in my noncreatures though is because I do in fact run a lot of pump in my vampires. Our commander is a stable and reliable pump effect that we can cast when we get up to mana and we have a lot of anthem lord vamps still in the deck. I also don't think that +1/+1 on a noncreature adds up enough to justify a card and casting that card in a lot of cases. The fact that we have 2 and 3 drop lords that have decent stats, forward our gameplan, and make a token to boot is so much better than the enchantments that give a single stat buff.
Evasion is one of those things that you kind of have to measure how well it works out for you though. If its not something you find yourself needing you can cut it. It has just worked for me and kept my creature counts higher which means that when I do cast Edgar there are more things I buff which results in more damage output. I would say the evasion in my mind gives me more value from the standpoint that I retain more bodies over time which does mean that several of my big anthems like say Shared Animosity can kick in even harder and connect a lot cleaner.
Kind of a random side note but I was kind of maybe kicking around the idea of Throne of the God-Pharaoh in here. Its cheap and potentially repeatable output and its interesting in that it hits all of our opponents fairly hard. Just a random thought in passing but I might give it a little more thought. It might have been brought up before in here I cant really recall. It might be something to test at some point.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I have finally put my deck up on Tappedout. I rarely use that site and this is only my second deck I have on my profile. They take a long time to do, but I felt this one was worth uploading.
Any advice on what I should prioritize for a buy list or keep an eye out for would be appreciated. I know that more lower cost vampires, but as I said, I live in Peru and often times the commons from older sets are far more difficult to get than rare, because people don't carry bulk commons in their binders, and stores turn over cards quickly.
"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
I have finally put my deck up on Tappedout. I rarely use that site and this is only my second deck I have on my profile. They take a long time to do, but I felt this one was worth uploading.
Any advice on what I should prioritize for a buy list or keep an eye out for would be appreciated. I know that more lower cost vampires, but as I said, I live in Peru and often times the commons from older sets are far more difficult to get than rare, because people don't carry bulk commons in their binders, and stores turn over cards quickly.
I took a look at your list and honestly it looks very similar to my own at this point in time. Most of the things I would suggest are mostly just making sure your cheap vampires are in line but you mentioned that might be harder to do. Fire Covenant has been a great card if you can get your hands on a copy I would recommend it. You could maybe boost your 1 / 2 drop vampire counts too. Some of your 2-4 mana vampires seem not optimal but in a lot of cases the strong vampires I would name you have but some of the mid tier ones you didn't which probably comes back to having been lower on your to get list.
Several of your vampires seemed a little more conservative and or defensive against being swept rather than more aggressive. Its possible you prefer the sticky ones but its also possible it was what you had or could get.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Yeah. I put the deck up on Tapped out so that it can be registers on EDHREC, so I can always have my list on my profile, so that I can do digital goldfishing when I am not at home, and so that I would never have to type the whole thing out here.
As far as the contents go:
Yes, the creatures are based on what I have available, not a specofic preference for any of them over your list. I can understand why it is difficult to find the older commons like Pulse Tracker, but the Ixalan common and uncommon creatures continue to elude me. I was thinking of buying the Explorers of Ixalan box just to get things like Shared Animosity and Time Warp, a some vampires and maybe make use of the silly mini game that came inside.
=========
Some things that I have discovered through playing the deck for the last year:
1) The Hideaway lands get better the worse the deck is and worse the better the deck is. That is to say, when you can consistantly hideaway a card which costs 4+, you can get solid value out of these lands, as dealing 7 damage or attacking with several creatures is an easy thing to do. However, coming into play tapped and setting you back two mana to activate is very slow, and when the odds are that your top 4 cards will only give you something which costs one or two mana, you are also not really cheating a mana cost either. Great on a budget, bad when building it to be competitive.
2) I still do not know how I feel about cutting so many answers from the deck. We are not control, but I often find it important to blow up a pesky artifact or enchantment can go a long way to winning the game. I really think I will reevaluate some of my spells and make room for Disenchant/Return to Dust or whatnot.
=======
Until I can get a minions' murmers, I was thinking about Promise of Power. Not as effecient, but 5 cards for 5 mana is not terrible.
"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
Yea it probably is. When you get up to that sort of mana range on something that does nothing until you cast more things I think its valid to start comparing them to Cathars' Crusade. Being its the exact same mana cost and the same waiting period but probably a lot more gain behind the crusade I don't think its fast enough to merit a spot.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
My YouTube Channel: The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
Even so I think it might be worth considering/including in a more midrange Edgar Markov build.
Maybe, I still think its a long shot because I can think of a lot of cards that probably would perform better. It is nice that it replaces the free token we get on cast with a 4/4 flyer but it also does nothing when you cast it until you can play more vamps which seems slow. I ended up cutting other things like Null Profusion for the same concern. I could probably come up with a lot of potentially useful if they stick cards in the 4-6 mana range but ultimately the concern is spending all that mana and getting no immediate advantage from them.
Possibility Storm is another card I probably would go back to if I wanted to slow down and run a little more midrange value.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Would you ever consider running dolmen gate? 2cmc and no colored requirements makes it good for multicasting. Its effectively another reconnaissance. Doesn't grant vigilance but that is rarely relevant in this deck and vigilance may be less valuable than gate's ability to kill opposing blockers without losing attackers. I imagine it would perform better than goblin war drums in most cases too. Drums bypasses a few blockers but you will still lose a few vamps on the attack and will not be able to attack with certain vamps that you can't afford to lose, so dolmen gate probably does more damage over time. Plus if the opponent has like 6 blockers it may still be unfavorable to attack even with goblin war drums, but with dolmen gate you can always let loose. It would also outperform iroas, god of victory in cases where you would rather multicast than pay RW for menace.
I would say the Menace/fear is still better than what the gate does.
In your example of six blockers, that means that they can only block 3 of my creatures, as opposed to six. That is a big deal. We are just trying to get damage in, and leaving up six blockers to stop some combination of tokens and one drops is hardly worth it.
I do nitthink it would be bad in a deck under construction, though I doubt it would ve an upgrade from what has been put together.
I cannot remember when I ever really cared about the damage prevention part of Ironas. When I play, I have found that the Menace caused people to scoop, as it completely changed the math of combat.
"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
Fear is definitely better. It's the same as unblockable for at least one player at the table. I would never cut cover of darkness for dolmen gate. Regarding its comparison to goblin war drums, I suppose you've got a fair point that the opponents may not want to hold up blockers when my creatures have menace, but what if they do? My point was that with just menace you would lose 3 vampires when swinging at those 6 blockers, and you would be unable to attack with at least one vampire in most cases so those vampires are effectively blocked as well. This means gate's damage output ends up comparable to drums' by the next turn, and may even exceed it. Plus what if I don't want to lose those 3 attackers just to get some chip damage in? Plus with gate you keep all your vampires which makes your other anthems better. And if dolmen gate isn't good enough just because of the damage prevention, wouldn't we need to cut reconnaissance?
Fear is definitely better. It's the same as unblockable for at least one player at the table. I would never cut cover of darkness for dolmen gate. Regarding its comparison to goblin war drums, I suppose you've got a fair point that the opponents may not want to hold up blockers when my creatures have menace, but what if they do? My point was that with just menace you would lose 3 vampires when swinging at those 6 blockers, and you would be unable to attack with at least one vampire in most cases so those vampires are effectively blocked as well. This means gate's damage output ends up comparable to drums' by the next turn, and may even exceed it. Plus what if I don't want to lose those 3 attackers just to get some chip damage in? Plus with gate you keep all your vampires which makes your other anthems better. And if dolmen gate isn't good enough just because of the damage prevention, wouldn't we need to cut reconnaissance?
You could probably interchange reconnaissance and dolmen gate with similar results. I do tend to like the other evasions more but Recon is still less mana which is a thing. The combination of keeping the creatures alive + mass vigilance isn't bad even though vigilance really isn't that big of a deal for this deck. I don't really think you would see a dramatic change with going with one or the other. I agree though that I like menace more for this deck though.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I ended up cutting it eventually just because I felt that its upfront impact was a little too low and it was too much of a value over time effect that required hitting and sticking for several turns. I kept others like Purphoros due to being more robust and hitting harder over keeping Impact Tremors. Goblin Bombardment also stayed over it due to the fact that I can draw it after getting a swarm of bodies and its time to use felt a lot faster than impact tremmors even if the total output of tremmors is more the fact that I could play Goblin Bombardment after swarming as well as potentially control the board with it made it feel better to me.
Ultimately I guess a lot of this deck when it comes to non vampires I have to ask myself how quickly I get the value back from the cards. The ideal hope is to have as much of the deck have upfront and immediate value as possible. Cards that you have to play and keep in play for several turns tend to slow the deck down a bit too much so what we really want are those cards with big upfront and immediate value. Its not a problem if they keep giving value but we want them to kick in as soon as possible.
When I was playing Impact Tremors I just saw too many times where someone would kill it soon after it was played and I felt like I wasted my own turns which is unfortunate considering how fast this deck is. Given that all the vampires give us two bodies it makes spot removal worse and given that Impact Tremors wants to be played upfront I just found too often that it felt like I was slowing down to play it and its time to be effective felt too high.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
What I like about Reconnaissance over Dolmen Gate in a deck like this is that the former is cheaper and provides you with chump blockers afterwards. Compared to Dolmen Gate there're more pros and no cons.
My YouTube Channel: The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
I can answer this. I removed my Land Tax in favour of Wheel of Fortune. Land Tax is supposed to be generating you Ancestral Recalls until you catch up, landwise. Unfortunately, with the deck's designation of aggro and highly aggressive at that, you don't have time to take tempo losses. Control, Combo and Midrange can all spend the first few turns lazily setting up their perfect mana base, which means they can run more Basics over Nonbasics. Since you need to almost guarantee you have RWB on every single turn, you run as may Nonbasics to accomplish that. Land Tax then 'only' draws you 9ish cards of your 10 or so Basics you run; meanwhile, every other deck runs 15 or more Basics and can just keep cashing in on Land Tax value.
Tev's answer is fairly spot on. There is the issue of it slowing us down but also there is an issue that its not the kind of card advantage this kind of deck actually wants or needs. If you don't have actual card draw you are going to run out of things to do in a much more real way. If you have actual card draw going then you don't really need land tax. Land tax is a good card for slower midrange and or control decks where as this is the kind of deck that by the time you get 3-4 lands you might not have anything other than your commander that you cant play.
Land Tax is also a poor draw beyond the first turn or two for this deck but this deck also wants to play a bunch of other aggressive things. If you burn out your hand and topdeck land tax its unlikely it puts you in a good position and for the most part land tax just enables us to get the land drops to get to our commander but we need actual card draw to get us more gas rather than wanting more lands.
I don't run land tax here because its slow and much better for slower decks who just wan't the consistency of having more lands for those land drops 4+ as the deck plays on. The card advantage and the mid to late land drops it provides are too slow for this deck.
If you start reading the thread from the start, right away I was trying to build with the "good vampires" rather than building a low curve build. I put land tax in that deck because I was casting vamps like Olivia Voldaren rather than trying to go deep on the benefit the commander gives. If you go to comment #26 you can see I shifted directions because every time I cast a cheap vampire it felt so much better than the big expensive ones. Essentially as soon as I shifted to a faster build I cut Land Tax and it has not been something that has appealed to my build since then.
Hey ISB. How has Obelisk of Urd been for you? Also, how important are Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, and Mana Crypt to the success of this deck? I have all three and while I have yet to get too many games in with them, I don't feel they add much to the deck. In fact, I thought the deck ran more smoothly before I added them. Maybe I am looking at them wrong, but the two Mox feel like card disadvantage to me.
Hey ISB. How has Obelisk of Urd been for you? Also, how important are Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, and Mana Crypt to the success of this deck? I have all three and while I have yet to get too many games in with them, I don't feel they add much to the deck. In fact, I thought the deck ran more smoothly before I added them. Maybe I am looking at them wrong, but the two Mox feel like card disadvantage to me.
I played this deck a lot heavier when it was new to me. I have a few other aggro and tempo decks as well and I tend to push to test my newest decks more than ones that I have had more time to test and tune just as a general of how I tend to play.
I haven't drawn Obelisk of Urd since adding it so I can't really comment on that end yet. The moxes have worked well for me but you aren't the first one to bring up and comment on them so I guess perhaps its worth taking that into account for what its worth. If you aren't finding card draw to refill your hand I can totally see it potentially being a problem but so far I have liked the speed they give me. Moxes totally are card disadvantage. They are tempo cards and if you can kick off of them into a faster start and a faster hand refill they are great but if you don't push off of them into strong plays after them then yes, they are a problem but this deck mostly operates as a tempo deck where the fact that you are playing a bunch of 1 drops will burn your hand out so if you don't get some good draw to follow them up even without the disadvantage of a mox you will burn your hand out and flounder.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Tymna the Weaver did some great work paired with Shadow Alley Denizen for me in the game.
Metallic Mimic and Oathsworn Vampire were a bit lacking in the game I had. The mimic is VERY noticeable that I don't get the token so even on curve I found it kind of awkward and if you don't frontload the damn card its really bad. Oathsworn is cute but its kind of..... not aggressive enough for me.
I almost always like 1 drops more than two drops outside of cases where the two drops are really good. The problem I guess is that the one drops that are left aren't black which makes them harder to cast since I tend to fetch and play a little more black mana than other colors. I have seen a few people play Stromkirk Condemned but its one that seemed a little questionable to me. Of the two drops though I think my preference would be somewhere in the order of:
You might prioritize the one drops over these or put them somewhere in the first three priority slots but its kind of hard to tell for me since they don't really have all that relevant of abilities and not being black is a bit of a bummer.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
1. How has goblin bombardment performed for you? My impression is that, at only 1 damage per creature, we don’t have enough resources to make it worthwhile.
2. Have you ever had the need to wrath the board yourself? Would there be merit in adding low cost sweepers like toxic deluge or blasphemous act? Or is tutoring for austere command sufficient?
3. Have your evasion anthems reconnaissance, cover of darkness, goblin war drums, and
iroas, god of victory performed well for you? Is evasion generally relevant enough to play these over something like shared triumph, radiant destiny or more vampires?
Evasion is one of those things that you kind of have to measure how well it works out for you though. If its not something you find yourself needing you can cut it. It has just worked for me and kept my creature counts higher which means that when I do cast Edgar there are more things I buff which results in more damage output. I would say the evasion in my mind gives me more value from the standpoint that I retain more bodies over time which does mean that several of my big anthems like say Shared Animosity can kick in even harder and connect a lot cleaner.
Kind of a random side note but I was kind of maybe kicking around the idea of Throne of the God-Pharaoh in here. Its cheap and potentially repeatable output and its interesting in that it hits all of our opponents fairly hard. Just a random thought in passing but I might give it a little more thought. It might have been brought up before in here I cant really recall. It might be something to test at some point.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
I have finally put my deck up on Tappedout. I rarely use that site and this is only my second deck I have on my profile. They take a long time to do, but I felt this one was worth uploading.
Here is my most current list based on what I own:
Edgar Markov Vampire Swarm
Any advice on what I should prioritize for a buy list or keep an eye out for would be appreciated. I know that more lower cost vampires, but as I said, I live in Peru and often times the commons from older sets are far more difficult to get than rare, because people don't carry bulk commons in their binders, and stores turn over cards quickly.
I took a look at your list and honestly it looks very similar to my own at this point in time. Most of the things I would suggest are mostly just making sure your cheap vampires are in line but you mentioned that might be harder to do. Fire Covenant has been a great card if you can get your hands on a copy I would recommend it. You could maybe boost your 1 / 2 drop vampire counts too. Some of your 2-4 mana vampires seem not optimal but in a lot of cases the strong vampires I would name you have but some of the mid tier ones you didn't which probably comes back to having been lower on your to get list.
Several of your vampires seemed a little more conservative and or defensive against being swept rather than more aggressive. Its possible you prefer the sticky ones but its also possible it was what you had or could get.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
As far as the contents go:
Yes, the creatures are based on what I have available, not a specofic preference for any of them over your list. I can understand why it is difficult to find the older commons like Pulse Tracker, but the Ixalan common and uncommon creatures continue to elude me. I was thinking of buying the Explorers of Ixalan box just to get things like Shared Animosity and Time Warp, a some vampires and maybe make use of the silly mini game that came inside.
=========
Some things that I have discovered through playing the deck for the last year:
1) The Hideaway lands get better the worse the deck is and worse the better the deck is. That is to say, when you can consistantly hideaway a card which costs 4+, you can get solid value out of these lands, as dealing 7 damage or attacking with several creatures is an easy thing to do. However, coming into play tapped and setting you back two mana to activate is very slow, and when the odds are that your top 4 cards will only give you something which costs one or two mana, you are also not really cheating a mana cost either. Great on a budget, bad when building it to be competitive.
2) I still do not know how I feel about cutting so many answers from the deck. We are not control, but I often find it important to blow up a pesky artifact or enchantment can go a long way to winning the game. I really think I will reevaluate some of my spells and make room for Disenchant/Return to Dust or whatnot.
=======
Until I can get a minions' murmers, I was thinking about Promise of Power. Not as effecient, but 5 cards for 5 mana is not terrible.
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
Yea it probably is. When you get up to that sort of mana range on something that does nothing until you cast more things I think its valid to start comparing them to Cathars' Crusade. Being its the exact same mana cost and the same waiting period but probably a lot more gain behind the crusade I don't think its fast enough to merit a spot.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
Maybe, I still think its a long shot because I can think of a lot of cards that probably would perform better. It is nice that it replaces the free token we get on cast with a 4/4 flyer but it also does nothing when you cast it until you can play more vamps which seems slow. I ended up cutting other things like Null Profusion for the same concern. I could probably come up with a lot of potentially useful if they stick cards in the 4-6 mana range but ultimately the concern is spending all that mana and getting no immediate advantage from them.
Possibility Storm is another card I probably would go back to if I wanted to slow down and run a little more midrange value.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
In your example of six blockers, that means that they can only block 3 of my creatures, as opposed to six. That is a big deal. We are just trying to get damage in, and leaving up six blockers to stop some combination of tokens and one drops is hardly worth it.
I do nitthink it would be bad in a deck under construction, though I doubt it would ve an upgrade from what has been put together.
I cannot remember when I ever really cared about the damage prevention part of Ironas. When I play, I have found that the Menace caused people to scoop, as it completely changed the math of combat.
You could probably interchange reconnaissance and dolmen gate with similar results. I do tend to like the other evasions more but Recon is still less mana which is a thing. The combination of keeping the creatures alive + mass vigilance isn't bad even though vigilance really isn't that big of a deal for this deck. I don't really think you would see a dramatic change with going with one or the other. I agree though that I like menace more for this deck though.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
I ended up cutting it eventually just because I felt that its upfront impact was a little too low and it was too much of a value over time effect that required hitting and sticking for several turns. I kept others like Purphoros due to being more robust and hitting harder over keeping Impact Tremors. Goblin Bombardment also stayed over it due to the fact that I can draw it after getting a swarm of bodies and its time to use felt a lot faster than impact tremmors even if the total output of tremmors is more the fact that I could play Goblin Bombardment after swarming as well as potentially control the board with it made it feel better to me.
Ultimately I guess a lot of this deck when it comes to non vampires I have to ask myself how quickly I get the value back from the cards. The ideal hope is to have as much of the deck have upfront and immediate value as possible. Cards that you have to play and keep in play for several turns tend to slow the deck down a bit too much so what we really want are those cards with big upfront and immediate value. Its not a problem if they keep giving value but we want them to kick in as soon as possible.
When I was playing Impact Tremors I just saw too many times where someone would kill it soon after it was played and I felt like I wasted my own turns which is unfortunate considering how fast this deck is. Given that all the vampires give us two bodies it makes spot removal worse and given that Impact Tremors wants to be played upfront I just found too often that it felt like I was slowing down to play it and its time to be effective felt too high.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
Mid-Tier: Marchesa Aggro Rose Asmadi Get Dire Tymna Ikra Woke Women Tiana Aura Angel Ruric Thar SMASH Smasher Kraum Mana Positivity Zur Slides
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG Gahiji Vigilant Vengeance Ezuri Mysterious Morphs
Land Tax is also a poor draw beyond the first turn or two for this deck but this deck also wants to play a bunch of other aggressive things. If you burn out your hand and topdeck land tax its unlikely it puts you in a good position and for the most part land tax just enables us to get the land drops to get to our commander but we need actual card draw to get us more gas rather than wanting more lands.
I don't run land tax here because its slow and much better for slower decks who just wan't the consistency of having more lands for those land drops 4+ as the deck plays on. The card advantage and the mid to late land drops it provides are too slow for this deck.
If you start reading the thread from the start, right away I was trying to build with the "good vampires" rather than building a low curve build. I put land tax in that deck because I was casting vamps like Olivia Voldaren rather than trying to go deep on the benefit the commander gives. If you go to comment #26 you can see I shifted directions because every time I cast a cheap vampire it felt so much better than the big expensive ones. Essentially as soon as I shifted to a faster build I cut Land Tax and it has not been something that has appealed to my build since then.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
I played this deck a lot heavier when it was new to me. I have a few other aggro and tempo decks as well and I tend to push to test my newest decks more than ones that I have had more time to test and tune just as a general of how I tend to play.
I haven't drawn Obelisk of Urd since adding it so I can't really comment on that end yet. The moxes have worked well for me but you aren't the first one to bring up and comment on them so I guess perhaps its worth taking that into account for what its worth. If you aren't finding card draw to refill your hand I can totally see it potentially being a problem but so far I have liked the speed they give me. Moxes totally are card disadvantage. They are tempo cards and if you can kick off of them into a faster start and a faster hand refill they are great but if you don't push off of them into strong plays after them then yes, they are a problem but this deck mostly operates as a tempo deck where the fact that you are playing a bunch of 1 drops will burn your hand out so if you don't get some good draw to follow them up even without the disadvantage of a mox you will burn your hand out and flounder.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
EDIT: also, are Magnus of the wheel and wheel of fate good budget replacements for wheel of fortune?
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB