I've been messing around with these three colors since Gatecrash was spoiled. I've always loved Rakdos and Orzhov since my first trip to Ravnica. After the Dragon's Maze prerelease I sat down and looked at what I could possibly do with the colors. My first build was RBW discard which looks decent on paper but itsn't quite what I wanted. Then I noticed we got a few new vampires that I had over looked in the spoiler. With about an hour of lookin at the options that stuck out most I came up with this.
The land base is alittle iffy for me and I'm not 100% on Blood Baron and Debt. Aside from those two cards though I think it'll turn out to be a fun deck to run for FNM. Any suggestions would be nice as long as there is a reasonable explination on the change. I've had some good experiences with this forum before so I'm confident I wont have to ask people to not bash my deck and leave. Thanks in advance for any advice.
stromkirk captain immediately comes to mind. Never underestimate an army of first strikers. And I'd drop debt of the deathless personally.... its too slow for 1 on 1 matches.
I think that this archetype has some serious potential, but I think your build is sub-par. I think an agressive midrange deck that goes about trying maximize Vampire Nocturunus and Stromkirk Captain's value is the best way to go. Rakdos has the best removal and anti-control sideboard options while orzhov goes a long way in beating up aggro strategies. The build that I plan on taking to FNM/I have been playing around with on Cockatrice, and then maybe sleeving it up for an upcomming PTQ.
Another quick thing.
Debt to the Debtless is bad. Ultimate Price is bad. Mutilate is also bad. Blood Baron is Nuts. Control has problems removing him and he stabalizes against aggro. Just ignore the last little part of him.
Blood Artist is bad for this deck also. We aren't Aristocrats or Zombies where we porfit of of things dieing, instead we play a good number of highquality creatures; we don't want them dead.
I think, aslo, Blind Obedience is slow for this match up and I want to keep the non-Black cards to a minimum. Searing Spear is better in my opinion. Also, I'm not too sure on Bloodline Keeper. I really think he is a sideboard card - or if he is a mainboard card its instead of Falkenrath Aristocrat. Turning your deck into a pile of haymakers against control (that will be uncounterable for the most part), should allow us to just overwhelm them.
I wanted to extract all the power I could out of the cards. That means having a high creature count in order to get Vampire Nocturnus, Stromkirk Captain and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad to be huge bombs. They get better with the more creatures you run so that seemed logical.
The rest of the cards are things that work well with the pillars of the deck. Vault of the Archangel works well with our high creature count.
Shadow Alley Denizen gives the deck reach by allowing our bombs to connect as well as being brutal with Stromkirk Noble as our creature count is so high you will be activating it every turn.
Vampire Nighthawk Gives us life to try and turn on Baron if possible. Not as hard as you think since all your guys have first strike and can gum up the ground. Nighthawk + Vampire Nocturnus means you could be gaining 4 life a turn so it's not as unrealistic as you would expect.
Duress is great in the main. You don't have any problems with other aggro decks but you really don't want to auto lose game 1 to control. This deals with the Sphinxes and verdicts that could slow you down.
Toil / Trouble is like sign in blood but it can also give you reach after they miracle a terminus or whatever. You don't really want spear as it's a red spell and you don't really want sign in blood as it provides no reach. Toil and trouble is a problem solver.
I have no creature removal as it seems dumb to include it. Every creature in our deck can beat there creature so why bother? They either attack into our favored board state and we make them lose everything or we bleed them slowly with evasion while gaining tons of life. We don't care if the boardstate gets massive as it's only a matter of time before we overpower them. Not much gets past a first striking deathtoucher ya know?
Man I'm really diggin all the opportunities to abuse Baron with Captains and Noct. Both ideas you guys have listed are really helping with main and side board options and I'll be sure to start posting some results from the next FNM I'm able to attend.
I get the reasoning behind using sorin, but i can't help but think that he is just flavor... I know with the right cards he will pop out 4/4 or 5/5 lifelinks each turn... but I feel like the games wont last long enough for him to matter. I would rather drop a bloodline keeper on turn 4 than sorin TBH...
I get the reasoning behind using sorin, but i can't help but think that he is just flavor... I know with the right cards he will pop out 4/4 or 5/5 lifelinks each turn... but I feel like the games wont last long enough for him to matter. I would rather drop a bloodline keeper on turn 4 than sorin TBH...
Your getting the wrath protection with sorin and lifelink vampires as we are playing baron. It has more in common then bloodline keeper and baron do.
Blood just simply does less then sorin does. Flipping bloodline normally means you should of already won. Hes a bad Vampire Nocturnus (Remember nocturnus effects himself so he's normally a 5/4 flyer for 4 mana, better then bloodline keeper). I don't like waiting a turn for my lord effects. In my list everything but 4 cards are black. I'll take +2/+1 Flying over +2/+2 anyday.
I'm currently doing a 2 bloodline/ 2 Noct split just for that reason. I understand i wont always need bloodline but i have a feeling sweeps will happen ( including my own mutilates ) and I like to have any possible recovery to get back to a decent board state. Just my oppinion though and is still just speculation.
I'm currently doing a 2 bloodline/ 2 Noct split just for that reason. I understand i wont always need bloodline but i have a feeling sweeps will happen ( including my own mutilates ) and I like to have any possible recovery to get back to a decent board state. Just my oppinion though and is still just speculation.
But it's wrong to even run Mutilate. You don't want to be giving yourself card disadvantage. Just play more creatures to beat whatever creature they are trying to beat you with. Mutilate does nothing to help your board state. The more creatures you play the better the lords get. It makes sense in tribal to be playing as much as possible.
Try my list. I haven't tested it but I feel like it should work as I've built it with maximum card synergy.
Your getting the wrath protection with sorin and lifelink vampires as we are playing baron. It has more in common then bloodline keeper and baron do.
Blood just simply does less then sorin does. Flipping bloodline normally means you should of already won. Hes a bad Vampire Nocturnus (Remember nocturnus effects himself so he's normally a 5/4 flyer for 4 mana, better then bloodline keeper). I don't like waiting a turn for my lord effects. In my list everything but 4 cards are black. I'll take +2/+1 Flying over +2/+2 anyday.
Wrong. Lands are all colorless; they tap for mana, but they have no color cost in the upper-right corner, thus they have no color. Thus, in reality, roughly 40% of the cards in a Standard deck do not activate Nocturnus when they are up. None of these decks are running anything to manipulate the top card (e.g., Sign In Blood), thus variance and statistics are going to hose the Nocturnus pump nearly as often as not.
And trying to play such a list without removal in the current Standard is utterly ludicrous. Any of the current aggro decks will run you over, period. You're too slow to take on Reanimator, who is going to chump you with Souls tokens, run up lifegain, then get out Angel of Serenity to yank whatever relevant creatures you have left.
If you want to run vampires, your best bet in this metagame is a control build and that's still marginal as there are better options. Tribal vamps simply gets going too slow to survive in Standard.
I'm gonna start this out by saying I don't think Turtleman's list is ay good. Toil /Trouble seems bad. Shadow Alley Denizen seems poor also, and Stromkirk Noble seems counter prodcutive to the decks game plan. You aren't running Godless Shrines. You have no removal. Spot removal is key in this deck to slow down aggro in time to get enough defensive two and three drops to slow them down as well as deal with the potent midrange threats like Olivia Voldaren and Angel of Serenity, etc.
Wrong. Lands are all colorless; they tap for mana, but they have no color cost in the upper-right corner, thus they have no color. Thus, in reality, roughly 40% of the cards in a Standard deck do not activate Nocturnus when they are up. None of these decks are running anything to manipulate the top card (e.g., Sign In Blood), thus variance and statistics are going to hose the Nocturnus pump nearly as often as not.
Sign in Blood, in my opinion should be a staple in this deck. The easiest way to lose to control and midrange is to get out carded by them and Sign in Blood helps fix that, alsong with fixing Nocturnus.
And trying to play such a list without removal in the current Standard is utterly ludicrous. Any of the current aggro decks will run you over, period. You're too slow to take on Reanimator, who is going to chump you with Souls tokens, run up lifegain, then get out Angel of Serenity to yank whatever relevant creatures you have left.
I agree not running removal is bad. But your situation has given the Reanimator player a magical christmas land. Of course Reanimator is gonna win when it just curves perfectly and we just play one or two duce and swing durdily into a pile on souls. The match, while far from good, rarely works out like that.
If you want to run vampires, your best bet in this metagame is a control build and that's still marginal as there are better options. Tribal vamps simply gets going too slow to survive in Standard.
This only partailly correct.The deck, at leasat the way I've built it, is an agressive midrange deck. Meaning that it can spend the begining turns getting incremental damage or stablizing with Life Linkers, First Strikers and Removal and then proceeds to drop haymakers. Turns 4-7 are where aour games happen and are won really.
A couple notes on some exempt creatures Falkenrath Aristocrat - I love this creature, and ran a playset back when I played Dos Rakis competitively. That said, I personally don't feel that she belongs in this deck because the 4-drop slot is already pretty crowded in Dega vampires, and most of the time I wanted to keep guys around to beat face rather than sac one for her, and she'll never get a boost since there's no humans, so she's still a tiny 4/1 that'll die to most things, so you have to keep feeding her smaller dudes to get continued value out of her.
Vampire Nocturnus - I don't like him in this deck. Yeah, most of the spells/creatures/Sorin are part black, so he'll get the boost to your dudes, but nearly 40% of the deck is colorless, and lingering Souls/Searing Spear/Stromkirk Noble puts that to probably closer to or over 50%, so the Nocturnus, as awesome as his ability is when it works, it's just going to whiff too much.
Stromkirk Captain - I'm planning on fitting 2-3 of this guy in somewhere, but just haven't made the cuts yet.
The one area that is a little clogged is my 4 drop spot but most of the time I don't play Olivia Voldaren until I either don't have another 4/5 drop or after I have 6 mana up.
Rakdos's Return may go SB (which I haven't spent too much time on yet) for either another Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and another piece of removal or just two removal spells. It seems like I always want to play beats unless I'm playing control.
On Falkenrath Aristocrat, it is a fantastic card, but I don't think killing off your creatures is a huge bonus to yourself with this approach. It seems like untapping with Bloodline Keeper is where I'd rather be since I'm not running Blood Artist.
Vampire Nocturnus is a gamble for this deck as lands don't count as black. So far I have been pretty happy with the build, and the curve looks great. I do have a problem with playing Stromkirk Noble turn one since I would have to throw down a shock land to play it. I thought about adding Blood artist for sweeper protection, but I don't know how well that would work.
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Stromkirk captain isn't just a good fit I think. T1 or T2 yeah... but if you topdeck him like t5... thats a waste of a card.
given the lovely aggro in the meta, I would rather have removal first
Stromkirk captain isn't just a good fit I think. T1 or T2 yeah... but if you topdeck him like t5... thats a waste of a card.
given the lovely aggro in the meta, I would rather have removal first
I disagree, the first strike saves your own beats from death. Remember, you can block too.
How? Its easier to cast (although a turn slower) and in the right circumstances is a win condition.
Double black is easy to get on turn two. You have 17 black sources. Two mana is huge acctually. It gives oyu something to do on turn two, so instead of having to conflict with your eight three drops, you can curve properly with Sign in Blood, much more so than with Toil // Trouble. Also I would never, ever, ever want to use the Trouble half. Against aggro its dead. And against control I'd rather use the draw to get a hold of my creature threats that are just better, and have the potential deal way more than just four or five damage. And it's usually a dead card against decks with lifegain. They just drop Thragtusk next turn and its like we never did anything.
Wrong. Lands are all colorless; they tap for mana, but they have no color cost in the upper-right corner, thus they have no color. Thus, in reality, roughly 40% of the cards in a Standard deck do not activate Nocturnus when they are up. None of these decks are running anything to manipulate the top card (e.g., Sign In Blood), thus variance and statistics are going to hose the Nocturnus pump nearly as often as not.
And trying to play such a list without removal in the current Standard is utterly ludicrous. Any of the current aggro decks will run you over, period. You're too slow to take on Reanimator, who is going to chump you with Souls tokens, run up lifegain, then get out Angel of Serenity to yank whatever relevant creatures you have left.
If you want to run vampires, your best bet in this metagame is a control build and that's still marginal as there are better options. Tribal vamps simply gets going too slow to survive in Standard.
Nocturnus is going to be turned on at least 60-70% of the time. This is due to the lists using sign and blood and toil and trouble with the wide usage of the U/W charm. It happens all the time.
You play removal but it's non-creature removal. You don't care about creatures they are playing because yours are just better. They can't Angel there way out of a blood baron. Aggro isn't a problem when you are playing a lord (Stromkirk Captain) that gives first-strike. Most aggro creatures are either 2/2 or 3/3 so a 3 power first-striker is going to do work.
If your looking to try play vampires as a control deck you should actually just go and play W/B/R control as you need to play lots of vampires to make playing vampires worth it.
Double black is easy to get on turn two. You have 17 black sources. Two mana is huge acctually. It gives oyu something to do on turn two, so instead of having to conflict with your eight three drops, you can curve properly with Sign in Blood, much more so than with Toil // Trouble. Also I would never, ever, ever want to use the Trouble half. Against aggro its dead. And against control I'd rather use the draw to get a hold of my creature threats that are just better, and have the potential deal way more than just four or five damage. And it's usually a dead card against decks with lifegain. They just drop Thragtusk next turn and its like we never did anything.
Do you post on the forums, or play Magic?
Because I have won more games using the Trouble side to finish. Its silly to say:
Also I would never, ever, ever want to use the Trouble half.
Just silly.
Early game, draw or hit them for 5-7. Late game, draw or finish.
You are silly.
Do you post on the forums, or play Magic?
Because I have won more games using the Trouble side to finish. Its silly to say:
Just silly.
Early game, draw or hit them for 5-7. Late game, draw or finish.
You are silly.
wut
You actually don't address a thing I said. This is a joke.
You can't refute my arguments about how Sign in Blood is better by simply groundlessly, telling me I'm silly and bad. >_< My arguments about Sign in Blood's better CMC and negligible color cost still stand. My arguments about how drawing into two more cards is more valuable than ~5 damage (Realistically that's the most you're going to hit them for on turn three) also still stand. If you want to be taken seriously go actually address a point I made, instead of just saying: "This card did good sometimes, dummy."
I disagree, the first strike saves your own beats from death. Remember, you can block too.
And I totally agree, just a 1/1 first strike mid-late game isn't what I want to draw into when I could use a nighthawk or something a bit heavier like blood baron.
in my experience noble just isn't good if you play him after t3 or t4
2x Blood Baron of Vizkopa
4x Blood artist
4x Vampire Nighthawk
4x Tithe Drinker
4x Bloodline Keeper
2x Olivia Volderan
2x Debt of the Debtless
3x Tragic Slip
2x Blind Obediance
2x Ultimate Price
2x Sorin, Lord of Innastrad
4x Goddless Shrine
4x Bloodcrypt
3x Iscolated Chapple
3x Dragon's Skull Sumit
2x Cavern of Souls
2x Vault of Archangel
2x Cliftop Retreat
3x Swamp[DECK]
The land base is alittle iffy for me and I'm not 100% on Blood Baron and Debt. Aside from those two cards though I think it'll turn out to be a fun deck to run for FNM. Any suggestions would be nice as long as there is a reasonable explination on the change. I've had some good experiences with this forum before so I'm confident I wont have to ask people to not bash my deck and leave. Thanks in advance for any advice.
and I love that you run that card.
Thoughts on nocturnus?
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Tahngarth, Talruum Hero
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I was going to try -2x Keeper +2x Noc after I test this version. Was pretty much one of them coin toss decisions lol.
-1x Olivia
-2x Debt
+3x Lingering Souls
4 Tithe Drinker
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Stromkirk Captain
4 Vampire Nocturnus
2 Falkenrath Aristocrat
4 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
Spells
2 Searing Spear
4 Tragic Slip
2 Dreadbore
1 Orzhov Charm
3 Sign in Blood
2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
4 Blood Crypt
4 Godless Shrine
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Isolated Chapel
3 Sacred Foundry
4 Cavern of Souls
1 Swamp
3 Rhox Faithmender
1 Olivia Voldaren
2 Bloodline Keeper
2 Sin Collector
2 Slaughter Games
1 Rolling Temblor
1 Pillar of Flame
3 Cremate
Another quick thing.
Debt to the Debtless is bad. Ultimate Price is bad. Mutilate is also bad. Blood Baron is Nuts. Control has problems removing him and he stabalizes against aggro. Just ignore the last little part of him.
Blood Artist is bad for this deck also. We aren't Aristocrats or Zombies where we porfit of of things dieing, instead we play a good number of highquality creatures; we don't want them dead.
I think, aslo, Blind Obedience is slow for this match up and I want to keep the non-Black cards to a minimum. Searing Spear is better in my opinion. Also, I'm not too sure on Bloodline Keeper. I really think he is a sideboard card - or if he is a mainboard card its instead of Falkenrath Aristocrat. Turning your deck into a pile of haymakers against control (that will be uncounterable for the most part), should allow us to just overwhelm them.
4x Blood Crypt
4x Cavern of Souls
4x Dragonskull Summit
4x Duress
4x Isolated Chapel
4x Shadow Alley Denizen
3x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
4x Stromkirk Captain
4x Stromkirk Noble
6x Swamp
4x Tithe Drinker
2x Toil / Trouble
4x Vampire Nighthawk
4x Vampire Nocturnus
1x Vault of the Archangel
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
I wanted to extract all the power I could out of the cards. That means having a high creature count in order to get Vampire Nocturnus, Stromkirk Captain and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad to be huge bombs. They get better with the more creatures you run so that seemed logical.
The rest of the cards are things that work well with the pillars of the deck. Vault of the Archangel works well with our high creature count.
Shadow Alley Denizen gives the deck reach by allowing our bombs to connect as well as being brutal with Stromkirk Noble as our creature count is so high you will be activating it every turn.
Vampire Nighthawk Gives us life to try and turn on Baron if possible. Not as hard as you think since all your guys have first strike and can gum up the ground. Nighthawk + Vampire Nocturnus means you could be gaining 4 life a turn so it's not as unrealistic as you would expect.
Duress is great in the main. You don't have any problems with other aggro decks but you really don't want to auto lose game 1 to control. This deals with the Sphinxes and verdicts that could slow you down.
Toil / Trouble is like sign in blood but it can also give you reach after they miracle a terminus or whatever. You don't really want spear as it's a red spell and you don't really want sign in blood as it provides no reach. Toil and trouble is a problem solver.
I have no creature removal as it seems dumb to include it. Every creature in our deck can beat there creature so why bother? They either attack into our favored board state and we make them lose everything or we bleed them slowly with evasion while gaining tons of life. We don't care if the boardstate gets massive as it's only a matter of time before we overpower them. Not much gets past a first striking deathtoucher ya know?
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Your getting the wrath protection with sorin and lifelink vampires as we are playing baron. It has more in common then bloodline keeper and baron do.
Blood just simply does less then sorin does. Flipping bloodline normally means you should of already won. Hes a bad Vampire Nocturnus (Remember nocturnus effects himself so he's normally a 5/4 flyer for 4 mana, better then bloodline keeper). I don't like waiting a turn for my lord effects. In my list everything but 4 cards are black. I'll take +2/+1 Flying over +2/+2 anyday.
But it's wrong to even run Mutilate. You don't want to be giving yourself card disadvantage. Just play more creatures to beat whatever creature they are trying to beat you with. Mutilate does nothing to help your board state. The more creatures you play the better the lords get. It makes sense in tribal to be playing as much as possible.
Try my list. I haven't tested it but I feel like it should work as I've built it with maximum card synergy.
Wrong. Lands are all colorless; they tap for mana, but they have no color cost in the upper-right corner, thus they have no color. Thus, in reality, roughly 40% of the cards in a Standard deck do not activate Nocturnus when they are up. None of these decks are running anything to manipulate the top card (e.g., Sign In Blood), thus variance and statistics are going to hose the Nocturnus pump nearly as often as not.
And trying to play such a list without removal in the current Standard is utterly ludicrous. Any of the current aggro decks will run you over, period. You're too slow to take on Reanimator, who is going to chump you with Souls tokens, run up lifegain, then get out Angel of Serenity to yank whatever relevant creatures you have left.
If you want to run vampires, your best bet in this metagame is a control build and that's still marginal as there are better options. Tribal vamps simply gets going too slow to survive in Standard.
Sign in Blood, in my opinion should be a staple in this deck. The easiest way to lose to control and midrange is to get out carded by them and Sign in Blood helps fix that, alsong with fixing Nocturnus.
I agree not running removal is bad. But your situation has given the Reanimator player a magical christmas land. Of course Reanimator is gonna win when it just curves perfectly and we just play one or two duce and swing durdily into a pile on souls. The match, while far from good, rarely works out like that.
This only partailly correct.The deck, at leasat the way I've built it, is an agressive midrange deck. Meaning that it can spend the begining turns getting incremental damage or stablizing with Life Linkers, First Strikers and Removal and then proceeds to drop haymakers. Turns 4-7 are where aour games happen and are won really.
4 Stromkirk Noble
4 Blood Artist
4 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Olivia Voldaren
4 Tithe Drinker
3 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
2 Bloodline Keeper
4 Searing Spear
3 Tragic Slip
2 Lingering Souls
2 Dreadbore
Planeswalkers (2):
2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Lands (24):
4 Blood Crypt
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Godless Shrine
1 Isolated Chapel
2 Dragonskull Summit
2 Clifftop Retreat
6 Swamp
1 Plains
3 Cavern of Souls
1 Slayers' Stronghold
A couple notes on some exempt creatures
Falkenrath Aristocrat - I love this creature, and ran a playset back when I played Dos Rakis competitively. That said, I personally don't feel that she belongs in this deck because the 4-drop slot is already pretty crowded in Dega vampires, and most of the time I wanted to keep guys around to beat face rather than sac one for her, and she'll never get a boost since there's no humans, so she's still a tiny 4/1 that'll die to most things, so you have to keep feeding her smaller dudes to get continued value out of her.
Vampire Nocturnus - I don't like him in this deck. Yeah, most of the spells/creatures/Sorin are part black, so he'll get the boost to your dudes, but nearly 40% of the deck is colorless, and lingering Souls/Searing Spear/Stromkirk Noble puts that to probably closer to or over 50%, so the Nocturnus, as awesome as his ability is when it works, it's just going to whiff too much.
Stromkirk Captain - I'm planning on fitting 2-3 of this guy in somewhere, but just haven't made the cuts yet.
WB Eldrazi Processors BW
Legacy:
WUBRGLandless DredgeGRBUW
EDH:
BGMeren of Clan Nel TothGB
WUBrago, King Eternal (Budget!)UW
4x Tithe Drinker
4x Vampire Nighthawk
4x Stromkirk Captain
3x Bloodline Keeper
3x Vampire Nocturnus
2x Olivia Voldaren
2x Blood Baron of Viskopa
2x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Sorceries: 8
2x Rakdos's Return
2x Dreadbore
2x Mizzium Mortars
2x Toil // Trouble
Instants: 4
2x Ultimate Price
2x Tragic Slip
2x Swamp
4x Blood Crypt
4x Godless Shrine
4x Sacred Foundry
4x Isolated Chapel
4x Dragonskull Summit
1x Cavern of Souls
1x Vault of the Archangel
Thoughts:
I've tried Stromkirk Noble but was thoroughly disappointed.
The one area that is a little clogged is my 4 drop spot but most of the time I don't play Olivia Voldaren until I either don't have another 4/5 drop or after I have 6 mana up.
Rakdos's Return may go SB (which I haven't spent too much time on yet) for either another Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and another piece of removal or just two removal spells. It seems like I always want to play beats unless I'm playing control.
On Falkenrath Aristocrat, it is a fantastic card, but I don't think killing off your creatures is a huge bonus to yourself with this approach. It seems like untapping with Bloodline Keeper is where I'd rather be since I'm not running Blood Artist.
4 Stromkirk Noble
4 Tithe Drinker
4 Vampire Nighthawk
3 Bloodline Keeper
3 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
2 Olivia Voldaren
2 Stromkirk Captain
2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Spells (12):
4 Lingering Souls
3 Tragic Slip
3 Searing Spear
2 Dreadbore
Lands (24):
4 Godless Shrine
4 Blood Crypt
4 Sacred Foundry
3 Cavern of Souls
3 Swamp
2 Isolated Chapel
2 Dragonskull Summit
2 Vault of the Archangel
Vampire Nocturnus is a gamble for this deck as lands don't count as black. So far I have been pretty happy with the build, and the curve looks great. I do have a problem with playing Stromkirk Noble turn one since I would have to throw down a shock land to play it. I thought about adding Blood artist for sweeper protection, but I don't know how well that would work.
How? Its easier to cast (although a turn slower) and in the right circumstances is a win condition.
Here's my list, subject to change:
4 Godless Shrine
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Sacred Foundry
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Mountain
CREATURES
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Stormkirk Noble
4 Stormkirk Captain
4 Tithe Drinker
3 Falkenrath Aristocrat
3 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
4 Boros Charm
3 Orzhov Charm
3 Toil // Trouble
3 Dreadbore
PLANESWALKERS
2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
3 Pillar of Flame
3 Cremate
3 Appetite for Brains
3 Slaughter Games
3 Tribute to Hunger
Best start:
T1: Stormkirk Noble
T2: Boros Charm, swing
T3: Trouble, swing
given the lovely aggro in the meta, I would rather have removal first
Currently Playing
UTron
Tahngarth, Talruum Hero
TRADE ME!!!
I disagree, the first strike saves your own beats from death. Remember, you can block too.
Double black is easy to get on turn two. You have 17 black sources. Two mana is huge acctually. It gives oyu something to do on turn two, so instead of having to conflict with your eight three drops, you can curve properly with Sign in Blood, much more so than with Toil // Trouble. Also I would never, ever, ever want to use the Trouble half. Against aggro its dead. And against control I'd rather use the draw to get a hold of my creature threats that are just better, and have the potential deal way more than just four or five damage. And it's usually a dead card against decks with lifegain. They just drop Thragtusk next turn and its like we never did anything.
Nocturnus is going to be turned on at least 60-70% of the time. This is due to the lists using sign and blood and toil and trouble with the wide usage of the U/W charm. It happens all the time.
You play removal but it's non-creature removal. You don't care about creatures they are playing because yours are just better. They can't Angel there way out of a blood baron. Aggro isn't a problem when you are playing a lord (Stromkirk Captain) that gives first-strike. Most aggro creatures are either 2/2 or 3/3 so a 3 power first-striker is going to do work.
If your looking to try play vampires as a control deck you should actually just go and play W/B/R control as you need to play lots of vampires to make playing vampires worth it.
Do you post on the forums, or play Magic?
Because I have won more games using the Trouble side to finish. Its silly to say:
Just silly.
Early game, draw or hit them for 5-7. Late game, draw or finish.
You are silly.
wut
You actually don't address a thing I said. This is a joke.
You can't refute my arguments about how Sign in Blood is better by simply groundlessly, telling me I'm silly and bad. >_< My arguments about Sign in Blood's better CMC and negligible color cost still stand. My arguments about how drawing into two more cards is more valuable than ~5 damage (Realistically that's the most you're going to hit them for on turn three) also still stand. If you want to be taken seriously go actually address a point I made, instead of just saying: "This card did good sometimes, dummy."
And I totally agree, just a 1/1 first strike mid-late game isn't what I want to draw into when I could use a nighthawk or something a bit heavier like blood baron.
in my experience noble just isn't good if you play him after t3 or t4
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