I played the new list three games last week. I think I have a LOT of testing and work ahead of me but holy ***** it was fun. From those games I only won 1/3 but honestly, after the first game with it (we only had three people show up) people started like.... meta decking against me so honestly I am not going to really view the results all that poorly.
Some of the highlights of the games:
1 Drop Vamps - I loved them every time. Honestly I just couldn't get enough of them every time I saw one it was kind of where I was going. If anything I could see slimming the list down a little more and running even more. These guys made the anthems feel WAYYYY better than they ever did in my previous list. The problem is I still kind of need the anthems to be vampire based so you know... the three drop anthems are really sick.
Dark Confidant - So good. I got him twice in the three games and every time he was just spinning gold for me. He costs little, he beats in, he just gets there for me doing the things I want. I have NEVER been pleased with Dark Confidant in commander but last week I wish he had a twin brother.
3 Drop Anthem Vamps - My previous build I felt much more wishy washy about these but they really shined in this new version. I still really want my anthems to be vampire based to give me those extra tokens but I was a lot happier with them with this build.
Really from the games I played, I loved the vamps I was running. I had some mana issues which might have been in part that I was not as pro active on turning cards over as I had expected myself to be doing. I was often prioritizing playing more board over playing the recover plan. When it comes to my mana issues, I never saw any of my tempo ramp in all of the games. I found myself running out of lands often at the 3ish mark several times and it felt bad. To some degree I have to accept that I cant hyper murder everyone even though my curve is low I did that so that my draw had more possibilities to hit harder and move cards better.
DECK CHANGES:
Teysa, Orzhov Scion -> Falkenrath Gorger Teysa always felt kind of bad when I would see her. I have less sac outlets in this build and that kept feeling kind of bad for me. I like what she can potentially do but my problem is that her three mana to cast felt a little clunky and too reliant on having had a good setup before I got to her. I constantly found myself wanting more cheap vampires and even though I don't really love this one it has 2 power which is somewhat redeeming. I don't know that I will ever use his ability as I don't really intend to build around it. I did actually consider one of the several 1/1 black vamps for 1 just given that I think its easier to hit black mana over red for this deck. We will see I guess.
Academy Rector -> Quag Vampires I have less sac outlets and I am trying to move a little faster. I like what the rector can do but it worked better in my previous build with more sac outlets. Time to try to move faster instead. I like that Quag Vampires has swampwalk so its potential that it can chip damage in a little on its own.
Behind the Scenes -> Retribution of the Meek every time I found Behind the Scenes I found myself wishing it was a different card. There were a few times I found myself wishing I had a few wraths in this deck too. I like that if someone sets up good I could kind of one sided blow them out as its rare my vamps get this big.
Yawgmoth's Will -> Dusk // Dawn I am just going to revert for now. I had a hard time getting enough mana to make Yawg work. I will see with more testing how my mana goes and if I think I can bring it back in.
Heirloom Blade -> Tithe Drinker every time I saw Heirloom Blade it was beyond terrible. Part of it is the cost of 3 to drop plus 1 to equip plus I brought my sac outlets down and I just felt like I would spend a whole turn like.... sacrificing a vamp to get a vamp.... Its just not good enough. With Tithe Drinker I am interested in if I can ever extort as its a nice pickup mechanic to waste mana on.
Steelshaper's Gift -> Legion's Landing I wanted to bring down my equipment and with that I need to bring down my tutors for equipment. Steelshaper's Gift is the only one I run that does not have a body and so I am going to cut it and just accept that once I get Skullclamp I have no targets instead of a bad target that I will be displeased with. I really am not sold that Legion's Landing is going to be any good but it does give me a cheap body and potentially flips into tempo ramp early on.
+ Mana Confluence - I counted my list and came to 99 cards (oops). I had some mana issues so for now I am adding in another land (up to 34). I think I need to test a lot more after getting some good shuffling in because I think that given my curve I should actually be fine with a lower land count. For now I will be safe and wait until I see too much land before I worry about things and bring it back.
Honestly, I need to stop feeling like I need to kill everyone immediately. Yes this list has a low curve but that is in part to try to use some of the amazing recovery tools available to a lower curve. Several of the cards I did not really see yet and I really do need more data before I can really say anything definitively. The list was a BLAST to play with as a low curve though and I really want to keep toying with things and see where it gets me. I feel like I am back trying to build Edric here and realizing I want / need a low curve all over again. Most of these changes are still very experimental and its possible that I may circle back to some of these cards but I need to test everything a lot more. I really like that it feels like there is a lot of complexity in how to build Edgar for being a tribal deck.
Adding in two situational wraths might seem odd but in some cases because I was not killing everyone that fast I was still encountering big creatures blocking or attacking me back. Some amount of this was on account that there were only three of us that night and I only brought two decks so people were kind of meta gaming me (stares at Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist). I do somewhat want to go to the mid stage of the game as when I am killing people and thats when some evasion or wraths are needed to connect at times.
I like the new low cost build and I agree that 1 drops are fantastic with Edgar. In my "combo" version, I think the most fun I've had was by abusing Edgar's eminence ability with low drops.
I'm currently considering lowering my curve and dropping most of the reanimate synergies except for Haakon and Razaketh, so and I'll check to see if I can grab a few ideas from your list!
Thanks, I think I am still a long ways from having anything solidified yet but I am having a lot of fun experimenting right now. I just noticed with my old list that I always wanted more cheap action and less of the expensive to cast stuff.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I had an interesting game this week. Originally we sat down and there were 5 of us (more than I like for an aggro deck) but I really wanted to play this deck so I said to hell with logic and I played it anyways. Three turns into the game someone else walked into the shop and everyone else was apparently cool with them joining in and just catching up.... I was less pleased as I should not have been playing an aggro deck with 5 people really.
Beyond that, I exploded out quite nicely. I was last to go (originally but the new guy joining became last). I had Gemstone Caverns so I opened with that exiling a 4th land I had. My T1: was land + Carrier Thrall. T2: land + Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle and I was off to the races. So, all game I had fairly good tempo but every time I played anything that wasnt a vanilla vampire it seemed to get blown up with the exception of a Skullclamp that somehow lived like all game.
I drew and played a Mardu Ascendancy behind the couple of vampires and made a few goblin tokens that were fairly good. On turn four or five I got Iroas, God of Victory which I slammed in and proceeded to beat face but immediately after that someone did a Merciless Eviction for enchantments (three Merciless Eviction for enchantments went off that game....).
The long end of this story was that I kept drawing fairly well off of Skullclamp but somehow I ended up keeping too much of the draw in my hand. When I finally pushed some pressure in I killed one of the 5 opponents and pushed most of them to the 10ish life mark utilizing Sanctum Seeker with 13 attacking vampires and Reconnaissance (tutored with Enlightned that turn). In the turn after that I lost almost all of my vmipres, 60ish life, and really everything I had going on.
Soon after that there was some kind of bad decisions made by my opponents and the game ended because too many of them were freaked out over me after what I did and they literally decided that I was a problem after I was not instead of worrying about 13 2/2 flying pegasi. The pegasus person threw the game away and did not kill the sunforger player who tutored for boros charm (he was at 4 life) and killed him.
I was a little salty afterwards but I think it did give me some valuable data as to some of my cards.
So, what was my take away this week? I have a few cards that require on too many other cards for them to be good and I have to accept I am going to get swept a lot / spot removed a lot. I want to take some of the over complexity out of a few cards and continue to lean down my curve as I continue to want more and more one drops if possible.
DECK CHANGES:
Mardu Ascendancy -> Gideon, Ally of Zendikar I love the idea of Mardu Ascendancy but every time I can "see" it working its because I am sticking other effects that are just good so in this case I keep envisioning like Purpheros / Impact Tremmors / Combat Evasion / Blood Artist effects sticking and then doing the Ascendancy. In every case I have seen, those cards have been good and the ascendancy has been bad unless I am sticking those good effects at which point in time I am going to call it "winmore" and move on. I love the idea of this card working, but the problem is, it doesnt unless I stick some other good effect first. I want to try out the one shot perma anthems because of how much my opponents have been destroying the things I have been doing I want to try this over say Eldrazi Monument (which I still think could be tested in this build).
Tombstone Stairwell -> Sorin, Lord of Innistrad really my issues with Tombstone Stairwell are the same as my issues with Mardu Ascendancy. I really don't want to be doing this effect unless I have stuck some other already good effect and those effects are good already. I want a card that is dead in my hand less frequently and I want to try out some of these perma anthems.
Living Death -> Yawgmoth's Will - Really its hard to say either way but being that a lot of my creatures are just vanilla 1/1s and stuff, I want to be casting them and getting the extra token off of cast. This week it felt like everything good of mine got exiled so.... I dont know we will see but Yawgmoth's Will potentially plays well off of its lower mana cost with some of my draw. I am not really sold either way but I suspect I will go back and forth testing a little and see what I am happy with.
Pawn of Ulamog -> Rakish Heir - I want to rely a little less on how good Impact Tremmors / Purpheros is and I think this interacts a little more favorably for me with more of the deck (aka the swarm of tokens / 1 drops). Pawn of Ulamog gets a little better as sac outlets and ETB / Death trigger effects go up this build seems to have a little less of that so far.
Gatekeeper of Malakir -> Olivia's Bloodsworn - If I saw more voltron I think gatekeeper could be a little better but I tend to be the one in this meta running voltron so I think taking it to a flying 2 drop thats a little less color intense is a good move for now. I just didn't really ever see board being cleared the other day to make me think that I could get away with gatekeeper doing something for me.
So, with this I pick up 3 more anthems which will be interesting to see how they fit. I think I am just going to order most of the 1-2 mana vamps to just have them on hand but I am always interested in more cheap drop vamps with this list so far. Really of these changes, I like most of them but I keep going back and forth with Yawgmoth's Will and Living Death. I will probably just ask myself which I would prefer if I draw / could tutor for either and see if that helps me sort it out. I could possibly use another evasion outlet too but I am still a little uncertain of Cover of Darkness as it sits.
Small fast aggro don't usually cut it. perhaps some think like winter orb or contamination might help to destabalise the opponents.
Thanks, its a lot of trial and error right now. Normally speaking this strategy is kind of flawed but there are so many big draw effects that you can run off of a low curve that its been working out for me.
Stasis effects - given all of the draw I am getting away with I am actually using most of my mana each turn even with the low curve. This is kind of defendant on getting some draw and sticking it but so far its been working for me. Its actually more likely that Stax effects would work better with this build given all of the cheap extra bodies we get but I have been hesitant to go down that route yet. Stax effects can be strong but there are actually not that many effects that I would want to play that are legal. MLD would also probably fit assuming someone was inclined to run such things but for now I am trying to run somewhat of a fair deck with a low curve and see how it pans out. I do actually enjoy fighting some uphill battles over trying to move to non interaction strategies and so I kind of enjoy the challenge of tuning and seeing what to do next. Its been fun coming back every week and asking how to make the deck better.
blade of the bloodchief - Its possible its just kind of an odd shift as I was going for more of a swarm / anthem build right now and it fits more of a sac / etb based build. I could take a bunch of small dudes and turn them into one big dude but outside of someone like damage sweeping me its hard to say when I would try to make such a move. It also takes somewhat of reliable sac outlets to pull it off.
ranger of eos - I considered it early on but ultimately its sort of a draw 2 effect. I do have some fairly strong 1 drops if I got to choose which I got but in the end I was comparing it against a lot of powerful draw effects and the one shot of it plus being 4 mana made it feel a little on the heavy end of the curve for what its doing. Tymna the Weaver for example has a fairly good option to draw 1-3 cards / turn that she lives and she costs one less mana to play. I could see ranger fitting into a build like this but when I was building it I opted not to run it because of how much power the draw I included had in comparison. I think his toolboxing is probably stronger than his draw element given all of this but I don't know how much I value that. Its also valid to question if its better to run Imperial Recruiter / Recruiter of the Guard over Ranger of Eos given the one less mana as well as bigger toolboxing opportunities. I don't think that any of those choices are wrong, but I did opt to cut them for the time being because I think that the mana spent on casting them is actually kind of heavy handed for this list.
Intangible Virtue - I do struggle with just buffing my tokens / nontokens. I ideally want to buff both and ideally put it on a vampire body so that it has synergy with the deck as well as makes a token that the anthem can buff. Keeping the anthems on vampire bodies is very strong and it is my preference but I am looking at and considering other cards. Some of the advantage of Intangible Virtue is its low cost but at the same time it will only be buffing approximately half of my creatures which I think is kind of unfortunate. I am adding the planeswalker anthems in part because they will guarentee me the value of their anthem for the rest of the game but I am not beyond considering additional anthems. I think that Eldrazi Monument was very good in my previous build before I went low curve and its something I could see adapting to this list as well. My issue with the low cost anthems is that I wonder if they do enough for me. Most of the anthem all of your creatures cost 3 mana and so I figured for one more mana I could put it on an emblem and make it harder for opponents to remove. Being a swarm based deck it has put a lot of things in play that can be removed so I worry that a small anthem might not be strong enough and it might also not stay. When it comes to non vampire anthems I tend to prefer the planeswalker anthems and the 5-6 mana anthems like say Homura, Human Ascendant (I went down on my sac outlets though), Dictate of Heliod, or Eldrazi Memorial. I am still kind of figuring some of this out and given that the 5-6 mana anthems hit harder when it comes to Ad Nausium / Bob I have opted to try to keep the curve lower for now and see how things do without them.
Break Through the Line - Its a nice mix of evasion + haste. My concern is that its kind of mana intensive for a swarm based deck. Ideally I want my evasion to be cheap and apply to all of my creatures at the same time. Pyreheart Wolf / Bedlam are some examples of effects I have considered. Sometimes disabling all blockers though gets all the attackers to come to you. Pyreheart Wolf seems like a great card but is a little slow and it itself is probably going to be one of the first things blocked which is a pain. As it stands, I want to go through a little closer and look at all of the evasion options because right now Iros / Reconnaissance seem to be probably the best and Goblin War Drumbs seems to follow them up. I probably need to do a little homework / searching to check a bunch of other options out.
EDIT: I decided to do an additional change to my list.
DECK CHANGE:
Yawgmoth's Will -> Mizzium Mortars I do really like Yawgmoth's Will but I keep wrestling with the issue that it seems to be a dead card until after I get blown up some and then its dependent on what removal my opponents used and or if they had grave hate. I like the idea of Mizzium Mortars from the perspective that it can be very cheap spot removal and it can expand to be a nice sweeper effect that does not screw up my own board. Mortars has a nice low cost for the purposes of taking damage = cards and it can be turned over cheaply if I need to for fairly good spot removal still. I think in a lot of ways it fits this deck other than its concerning overload red intensive cost. If I am looking to overload it though it wont be as early on and I even if I cant I still have spot removal outside of the overload.
Eh on blade you do have lots of sacking going on as effects. It just seemed like getting the most bang for buck would be a logical choice when you have 5ish sac outlets.
On Virtue, I think you should really consider it. You make a decent amount of tokens from markov and its the only +1 other than Shared Triumph that isn't going to screw you by being even sided or 4CC+. I would have suggested Glorious Anthem but double white turn three might be pushing it, and its not the best anthem late game. Virtue has the added benefit that you can get defensive and offensive with your tokens. The only other option I could seriously suggest is Door of Destinies. Admittedly you could add both virtue and shared together but that removes some tech from the game. As a funny you could also put intangible and Always Watching together as well but it would still have the turn three issue of double white. Another thing I was thinking of suggesting is dynacharge but I don't know how well you swarm. I mean id assume its decent unless your stopped but other than that ......
On break your probably right that its too mana intensive but I figured that haste and unblockable would fit your deck sooo well. I thought about suggesting adding haste enchantments but other than Hammer of Purphoros, In the Web of War, Fervor, Mass Hysteria the only two I'd actually personally use would be hammer and in the web just because of the utility.
Eh on blade you do have lots of sacking going on as effects. It just seemed like getting the most bang for buck would be a logical choice when you have 5ish sac outlets.
On Virtue, I think you should really consider it. You make a decent amount of tokens from markov and its the only +1 other than Shared Triumph that isn't going to screw you by being even sided or 4CC+. I would have suggested Glorious Anthem but double white turn three might be pushing it, and its not the best anthem late game. Virtue has the added benefit that you can get defensive and offensive with your tokens. The only other option I could seriously suggest is Door of Destinies. Admittedly you could add both virtue and shared together but that removes some tech from the game. As a funny you could also put intangible and Always Watching together as well but it would still have the turn three issue of double white. Another thing I was thinking of suggesting is dynacharge but I don't know how well you swarm. I mean id assume its decent unless your stopped but other than that ......
On break your probably right that its too mana intensive but I figured that haste and unblockable would fit your deck sooo well. I thought about suggesting adding haste enchantments but other than Hammer of Purphoros, In the Web of War, Fervor, Mass Hysteria the only two I'd actually personally use would be hammer and in the web just because of the utility.
Blade of the Bloodchief - I cant actually recall ever having any sac outlets since I changed my build. My previous build had more sac in it. I also don't think I can think of a case I would sacrifice to bring an equipped creature up to being big. It really defeats the point of running anthems to consolidate all of the power in one creature. If you got it into play and were expecting someone to say Pyroclasm then I guess but that seems like a lot of what if situations to plan around.
Intangible Virtue - I still see a lot of issues with it, only half of my strategy is incorporating tokens and honestly the creatures I am interested in connecting with are primarily some of the non tokens as I have some that have triggers on attacking and some with triggers on hitting players. When it comes to a question of defending, what if I just play some more creatures and defend with them? I really have not had issues defending myself as I am usually the aggressor with this build. I think that the single buff anthems that add no evasion are just not enough of a buff to be honest. When I can get them on an actual vampire its not so bad as I get another body out of the deal as well. When it comes to the idea of what if I draw this card right after being blown up is when I really don't like the idea of a small anthem that does nothing else. Shared Triumph is probably a lot more likely to be something I would consider but even then, I don't think it adds enough to my gameplan. Whenever you get a non creature anthem thats small its going to complicate things in some ways and be a bit situational as to when you want to play them. I opted to add the planeswalkers in part because the emblem is literally untouchable once its fired off and so its not adding more stuff to get blown up once I fire them off. While an enchantment would be faster, I don't think the difference in 2 to 4 mana is actually fast enough to make up for the fact that it leaves another thing on board to be blown up if I get swept. I also am very busy with my curve of my creatures in the first few turns given what my vampire curve looks like so a 2 drop non creature really isn't going to get played before I get my hand of guys into play.
Shared Triumph - as I mentioned above, I have issues with noncreature anthems in that they are awkward to time playing in that I have to play my creatures too, they require a good board to play them into, and they complicate my board further for wraths.
Glorious Anthem - Its ok but buffing my non vamps is a small matter for one more mana. Spear of Heliod is fairly similar if you are running this with the small downside of also being an artifact it can serve as removal.
Door of Destinies - My issue with this card is that it takes time to spin this up. I want to be curving my hand in before this so if I get this, suddenly I want to be casting a TON of vamps behind it so its super slow to start and you need a lot of gas behind it. In a lot of ways its kind of a similar issue as with Cathars' Crusade / Bloodlord of Vaasgoth in that its kind of expensive to cast and then needs to be followed up with a ton of dudes. Its far better to have your anthems kick in quickly and affect your current board over being a setup for the future as it means that your opponents get time to interact with you and your plans.
Dynacharge - or better yet, Vampiric Fury. Mostly, its a one shot effect and I have to be swarming fairly hard for a one shot buff to do sufficient damage.
Haste Effects - Mostly, I don't want to spend a card / turn casting an effect to give me haste. Cards that are noncreatures are important enablers. Its true that I could possibly get more damage in if I had haste but the haste outlet itself needs to be cast, it consumes a card, and I don't have that many card in the deck that would directly benefit from haste other than doing some output. Its easier to just not worry about that and keep moving forward with a gameplan that does not require that given how few vampires care about haste.
Whenever it comes to a noncreature effect I ask myself what it does for me. Ideally speaking I want my noncreatures to clear out opposing defenses and get me to connect to kill them. Sometimes spot removal is necessary in cases where things like Magus of the Moat / Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite are involved otherwise I probably would run less removal than I do right now. Evasion, Draw, Ramp, and Removal are the primary reasons I include noncreature effects in here.
ISB, I like where you're going with the new build. Much faster. Read your take on the stasis effects and LD. So what do you think about Keldon Firebombers? I love springing that card on people. And it would work great in this deck. Hey, it's fair LD, nobody can *****, too much. Then again, Winter Orb is probably better.
ISB, I like where you're going with the new build. Much faster. Read your take on the stasis effects and LD. So what do you think about Keldon Firebombers? I love springing that card on people. And it would work great in this deck. Hey, it's fair LD, nobody can *****, too much. Then again, Winter Orb is probably better.
Its possible to do MLD or stax tactics with something like this. I would actually probably decrease the amount of draw / recovery for that kind of stuff though because I do actually actively use most of my mana each turn as it stands. I think several adjustments would have to be made to play the deck that way as well because when you run MLD its usually best to have a big threat rather than several small ones. If someone were to get say a 3/3 into play before it went off its possible that could be a problem for the LD strategy as you are going to slow down your own development as well.
I still think that Smokestack would probably pan out better than an Armageddon just given what the deck can do.
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not mass land destuction, i meant you probably need a few cards that slightly disrupt the opponents while u chipped away. mindcensor, thalia or winter orb... smokestack is too slow.
not mass land destuction, i meant you probably need a few cards that slightly disrupt the opponents while u chipped away. mindcensor, thalia or winter orb... smokestack is too slow.
Its possible. I did consider Thalia and I think she is still something I may still explore. My issue with her is that if she is not drawn in like the first 2-3 turns I think she is really losing a lot of her value. Its possible something like Aura of Silence might fit a little better given it still gives you the opportunity of spot removal if drawn later.
It is true that I move quikcly but my overal goal was not neccessarily a fast kill with this line of building. The point of building this way was twofold
Edgar Markov's token value does not take into account how expensive the vampire is which means that cheaper vampires actually generate more value from Egar than exepsnvie vampires.
Ad Nausium effects care about having a low curve and can refill heavily.
It is true that having a low and fast curve could be combined with stasis and disruption effects and it probably would be fairly good. If you however are getting a good continuous turnover of card draw it can hurt you as well though too so for now I am just seeing if I can jam more cards through play than my opponents and rely on unfair tempo draw to refill. If you were to utilize a Winter Orb effect to buy time it will slow yourself down as well which will also mean that tempo drawing cards and playing them will also be harder to do.
With any hatebear effect you always rely on that effect hitting your opponent. If you were to run a bunch of Winter Orb effects and your opponent has Sol Ring + Signet opener you are going to lose your ass off. If you play a T2 Thalia vs creatures.deck its going to suck. In a lot of ways these effects are all reliant on meta or deck specific lineups for them to work well. They also require you to make room for a package of cards that does not further your own gameplan (which in this case is to play a bunch of dudes). I felt in this case that it was actually better to focus on what I am trying to do than to see if I could situationally disrupt my opponents.
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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.
8 of your 36 Creatures are not vampires. Have you considered running Cavern of Souls as mana fixing, with the added benefit of making your stuff un-counterable? In this build it seems like it would function fairly well when you cast your creatures.
@MtG_Maniac. Also, Keldon Firebombers is totally Mass Land Destruction. It's potentially worse than just Mass Land Destruction, as it comes on a body which means you can flicker/recur it and keep everyone at 3 mana forever.
8 of your 36 Creatures are not vampires. Have you considered running Cavern of Souls as mana fixing, with the added benefit of making your stuff un-counterable? In this build it seems like it would function fairly well when you cast your creatures.
@MtG_Maniac. Also, Keldon Firebombers is totally Mass Land Destruction. It's potentially worse than just Mass Land Destruction, as it comes on a body which means you can flicker/recur it and keep everyone at 3 mana forever.
I was hesitant to include Cavern of Souls originally because so many of my vampires are kind of junk stuff but from the perspective of early fixing for the vamps it might be alright. I originally included Path of Ancestry in my list but ETB tapped is really not ok in retrospect.
DECK CHANGES:
Carrier Thrall -> Vampire Interloper I gave this a little more thought and while I think Carrier Thrall is cool, it seems to play more to the Purpheros / Blood Artist stuff than to swarm tactics. The fact that the token is not a vampire means that it plays a little better to just meat grindering bodies than vampire anthems. I think the flying on Vampire Interloper will enable me to chip damage with it a little better with this selection as well.
Crackling Doom -> Mirror Entity - I go back and forth with Crackling Doom but ultimately I think its a little weak given that its creature only removal and I cant control it all that well. I have added several sweepers since building this revamped list and I think of my spot removal I think Crackling Doom is possibly my weakest include right now. Its sort of good vs voltron decks but my current meta sees too little of that for me to really like this card right now. Mirror Entity is something I didn't really consider since moving to the newer faster list but I think it fits this list a lot better than it did my previous list. In my previous list I was more utilizing the number of bodies I was getting rather than swarming with the deck. Its possible I should put some thought into Crib Swap or Nameless Inversion but I think both of them get more into the realm of questionable without running Haakon, Stromgald Scourge.
Westvale Abbey -> Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - so, I have a hard time with this change because I love the flavor and feel of Westvale Abbey so much but I have moved to a deck where I need my mana and I need my swarm of creatures too often. The need to have a bunch of creatures you don't need or have 5 mana up while being swept is just a little too intensive for how much of my mana I have been using like every turn. I have also been turning my card draw over better to the point that I want to try Nykthos again and see if I can use the mana it could potentially provide me. Its kind of tricky being I am a 3 color deck but I am so much heavier on black that I want to give it another shot and see what it does for me.
Path of Ancestry -> Cavern of Souls - This seems like a fair trade off. I really loved the idea of getting to scry from Path but realistically I just cant play out an ETB tapped land in my first 3 land drops so I think this is an improvement for my mana fixing and I can still see some of my 3+ mana vampires being things that people would counter if they can.
I am looking forward to testing the deck with so many more anthems than last time. This week I cant make it to play thought because I am helping with a Halloween event on our usual magic night. I will have to wait and see what next week brings.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I am really enjoying following this list. I do enjoy my combo, but I will probably go with a fast-wide list like this one as my play group is rather green (as in new, not green mages). I really enjoy Edgar, so thank you for all the storming. I just started to crack down on my brewing so I do not have many suggestions to add, but I was wondering why you have not included any Anointed Procession?
I guess it's on the top end of your curve, but it really really helps refill the board after a wrath effect.
I am really enjoying following this list. I do enjoy my combo, but I will probably go with a fast-wide list like this one as my play group is rather green (as in new, not green mages). I really enjoy Edgar, so thank you for all the storming. I just started to crack down on my brewing so I do not have many suggestions to add, but I was wondering why you have not included any Anointed Procession?
I guess it's on the top end of your curve, but it really really helps refill the board after a wrath effect.
Hey thanks, I am still feeling a LOT of things out as I have only moved to this build a few weeks ago. I do not by any means have all of this figured out yet but I keep trying and testing things.
Anointed Procession - I actually ran it in my previous version. I ended up cutting it as I moved to the lower curve but to be honest, it wasn't ever all that great for me. Given that you spend a card casting it, if that card was just a vampire instead it means that you have to cast THREE vampires after casting Anointed Procession to come out ahead on the bodies (at two vampires after you would be at 6 bodies in both cases but 1/1 vamp tokens are still usually slightly weaker than actual card vampires). Being that it is at 4 mana I really don't want to be hording my early game action for after something like this so the payoff for this card just feels like its really slow to me. I also don't like spending 4 mana to do nothing and then have a slow payoff to follow it up. Its one of those cards where if you can hit it on curve and it sticks for a long time then sure run it but I think its got a lot of problems in most any build to be totally honest. I experimented with Mardu Ascendancy and in the end I cut it but I think it gives a much faster turnover of bodies which makes it probably more ideal. Even with that I cut that card because it felt too dependent on getting something to abuse ETB / Deaths / or evasion.
Low curve might indeed be the way to go... I am running a fairly low curve list as wel.. I see a few inclusions in your list I might actually consider and you convinced me to drop Vaasgoth, cause it might be a bit to slow indeed...
I like the overall sweeper package you have also.. ^^ I don't see a Fire Covenant btw, why is it not included, it was a great removal/sweeper for me.. ^^
Also for reanimation tactics might Immortal Servitude maybe be a good inclusion... seeing as a lot of the creatures are either 1 or 2 mana.. this could be a 1 sided Reanimator in that regard... Living Death sometimes might be a good, but it has the downside of helping the opponent a lot more sometimes...
How did the God's fair for you... I see you are using Athreos, Purphoros and Iroas.. (I think I have all 3 of those, but not in my list right now)
Would you say they are a must include or are they not as important overall for the strategy?
On that note are the tutors needed as much also or not so much? I think I only have Demonic Tutor and Stoneforge Mystic...
Here some vampires to consider: Gifted Aetherborn (best stats of any 2 mana vamp out there I feel) Asylum Visitor (another potential draw option - also works with some of the potential discard vampires) Stromkirk Condemned - (pump on a vampire) Stromkirk Occultist (might be to slow sometimes I guess... but the potential 'draw' + having madness + trample might help) Vampire Hexmage - (pretty good vs some strategies - answers planes walkers for example..) Heir of Falkenrath - (if you can flip this it's a great flyer - 3/2 for 2 with flying - though the cost might not work wel enough with enough madness cards) Furyblade Vampire - (also helps the madness route + can potentially be a 4 power trampler) Irini Sengir - (a vampire that slows down enchantments for green/white - a bit high end, so might not be good enough.. ^^) Bold Impaler - (decent 1 drop)
Hope that maybe the suggestions can help... I am still working on tweaking my vampire list as wel... It has it's good days and bad, so still not sure how to make it more consistent/stronger overall... Might have to lower my curve a bit more or need more 'answers' or something..
Wil definitely try to obtain some of the sweepers you included to try those out as wel..
Fire Covenant - seems interesting and fun. I will see if I can pick up a copy and try it out sometime.
Immortal Servitude / Living Death - Honestly I have continued to be not impressed with any of the reanimation tactics for vamps. Lots of our value comes from casting the vampires instead of just putting them back into play. Last week I was playing an I got bogged, hit by Merciless Eviction, Roon exiled my things with Fiend Hunter, the opposing Edgar exiled 2 of my vamps with Dark Impostor, and I got hit by Return to Dust. I think the only non exile removal I hit last week was Jund Charm (which messed up my small guys / tokens). Last week was a bit of an oddity but that was a *****LOAD of exile removal last week and due to that I have been a little gun shy of trying to rez. I think even without having seen all that exile / grave hate there are still concerns with running all that much rez recovery in that it requires you to get swept and then have them in hand. Those cards are dead until you get swept and then they are still vulnerable to the question of what kind of removal was used as well as a question of if you are getting hit by grave hate.
GODS - Iroas, God of Victory & Purphoros, God of the Forge have been completely amazing. People literally mess their britches when they see either one of these come down. Iroas is in my opinion the best evasion you can get and it makes it so its hard to block your creatures as well as that they do not die attacking which is completely bonkers. I have not yet drawn Athreos, God of Passage so I cant say as much on that end but there are pros and cons to the fact that Athreos goes off of black devotion because I think its actually fairly likely that we can turn Athreos into an attacker / blocker for us in this deck whereas Iroas and Purpheros likely stay as enchantments. Being a creature has pros and cons as it does make them more susceptible to removal but a 5 attack indestructible god for 3 mana who has a very relevant ability sounds nice to me. Iroas, God of Victory and Purphoros, God of the Forge have been incredible essentially every time I have seen them and people do lose their minds when they see them because both of them will just eat people alive. I actually think that Iroas, God of Victory might do more work than Purpheros which is odd to say but we curve in so fast that Iroas is really nice where he is at mana wise where as Purpheros needs time to work his magic. I don't know if I would say they are a must have but Iroas has been the best evasion thus far in my experience of the three cards I devote to evasion.
Tutors - I don't know that there is really any one card I would say I am always getting to be honest. Tutors are sometimes about having the right card at the right time. If I have a bunch of bodies in play already I will probably tutor for evasion or pump (Sanctum Seeker is really good). I think what tutors are actually stronger for though is guaranteeing you have some sort of draw though because a deck like this really falls apart if you dont keep drawing more cards. If I have draw already I am probably just going to go for whatever the current situation calls for. I dont think that tutors are all that necessary but they do give you a little more consistency in your plays.
OTHER CARDS YOU MENTIONED:
Gifted Aetherborn - it has no evasion and BB in its cost. In a lot of cases you want lifelink / lifegain when facing down opposing aggro decks. Aggro is somewhat of a rare archetype for commander so I don't often find myself face to face with other aggro decks. Deathtouch + Three toughness does make it trade ok but I am actually a little more interested in flying than I am lifelink + deathtouch. You generally should prefer evasion over lifelink for vs control, combo, and general late game tactics and prefer lifelink as a control strategy vs other aggro decks. Because I want to be the aggressor that I favor the flying evasion. This deck also has a TON of demands on its mana base that all come up quite early on so I try to avoid double mana symbols when I can.
Asylum Visitor - I have yet to see a situation where my hand is completely depleted. I think that its clause is not really a situation you want to put yourself in. If you were running discard tactics is where I think that achieving its effect is more likely to happen. I do like the three power on it but its low toughness means I really have to have evasion or first strike for it for me to really feel I can use it on offense.
Stromkirk Condemned - If you are swimming in draw efffects I think its ok. There are also the madness vampires I just don't feel that I build around them enough to feel like I would use the activated ability much. I see this kind of ability as a short term value in some ways where I would be hesitant to use it. Its possible that just having it in play can fudge combat math in our favor and make people hesitant of trades but really, I like this less than most of the three mana anthem vampires. I do think that I need to personally test it at some point but every time I have looked at this option I have felt a little reluctant.
Stromkirk Occultist - So, if this was a 2 drop I think I would actually be interested in it. I think its ability is alright but trample is tricky to utilize as evasion. It still has a low toughness and as a three drop it competes with a lot of my anthem plays which I think are superior. If it was a 2 drop (even like a 2/2 for 2) I think I would be interested in it but that third mana I just expect kind of more out of my creatures when it comes to higher costs.
Vampire Hexmage - We are a deck full of aggro minions. I don't think a planeswalker can survive through them. I actually like Hexmage as a 2/1 first strker for 2 mana but the fact that its a BB cost I have some concerns about it. First stike is a great mechanic for vamps especially as you start adding anthems to it. I don't really see myself wanting to sacrifice it to blow out a planeswalker because I don't expect a planeswalker to live through my next attack anyways in most cases. Its possible that it could be more useful against some of the bigger planeswalkers like Ugin / Elspeth, Sun's Champion / Chandra, Flamecaller (essentially ones that sweep or fill the board) but outside of like a few of them I don't really see myself needing a vamp specifically to kill planeswalkers. If you are experiencing a meta that is over populated with planeswalkers I guess but normally speaking, I don't see myself wanting to sacrifice it for its ability.
Heir of Falkenrath - I considered it when I was adding some of the 2 mana flying vamps but honestly I am not building a madness / recursion based build. I dont want to be discarding cards from my hand unless I just spent my turn going over 7 cards in hand really. I think if you don't have a strong draw outlet established, discarding cards is a little rough.
Furyblade Vampire - I dont like discard. I think the base stats are underwhelming as well and its too bad that with all of that power gain in the discard it does not pick up first strike. I really see this one as being underwhelming. Also, the fact that its ability has to be activated "at the beginning of combat" is really really bad as you cant even use this as an optional combat trick after blocks are made.
Bold Impaler - It would be one of my next considerations among one drops if and when I can make space for more. There are a few options left including Guul Draz Assassin. I probably would include Guul Draz Assassin first to be honest but thats more because its black instead of red which I have a small advantage for in my landbase given how many of my cards are black. I really dont know that I would ever activate the abilities of either one drop but being a black one drop gives me a small advantage in being able to cast it on curve or be able to cast multiple things in one turn as I have more of a preference to black in my landbase.
Thanks for the suggestions. I am still working out a LOT of things myself. If not for its cost I really would love to include Austere Command given that I only have 2 creatures in the list (plus commander) that would die to the 4+ mana creature kill option of Austere. Its a somewhat slow process for me to make changes in what vampires I run. Most of it comes down to me testing things and going.... that didn't feel quite right. I think that really most of the cheap vampires that exist may be viable and while I don't personally run some of the madness / discard stuff its possible to make that stuff work. I made a lot of changes last week and I really want to get the time to test some of that as I have turned over a good portion of cards.
EDIT: I just thought about the potential of Possibility Storm in this deck. I am kind of blown away by the possibilities in this deck (lol possibilities). Keep in mind if you cast a vampire and find a second vampire off of Possibility Storm you will get 2 vampire tokens. This deck is also primarily a proactive creature based deck so throwing in any creature and getting any creature out really isnt that bad when we have this low of a curve you mostly get about the same thing back out of it. Given our low curve too we can play a lot of the cards we want to have in play before it and afterwards its mostly going to screw with our opponents who probably have more of answers and late game left in their hands.
It seems like a very interesting disruption tool for a deck like this. I am going to work on getting it into my list and trying to test it out.
I like your idea about the possibility storm not sure how well it wil work, seeing as it's 5 mana and for that mana we could get something explosive that pumps our dudes to arbitrary/huge sizes for example Coat of Arms ^^
But it might be an idea to try it out still... I don't know how great it wil work, but I guess it's never a bad thing to try out new things
Wil hear/read here how it works out I guess.. Hope it's a great inclusion.. though am a bit doubtful.. ^^
Edited:
Forgot to add about the reanimation, etc... I do think you might be right.. they might be dead cards in the hand for a while when you draw them early.. so I wil not be adding them either.. (didn't have any of them before, but was thinking of adding something to be able to get back from sweepers..) Though I guess more draw into more vamps should work fine... ^^
Edited 2:
Fell the mighty might be another sweeper we could use in this deck... A bit high on the mana cost I guess, but it can be fairly one sided... seeing as it sweeps creatures with greater power than the creature you target.. ^^
Possibility Storm - For now I think I am just going to put it into my considerations as I have made like 10 changes since I last played already and I think while I see some room for it to be promising I also don't want to go through with too many changes at once. I need to move back to testing the new changes I made to see how they are working and work towards what my weak cards are again. The point that it is 5 mana is very true and there are several other cards at 5 mana that could be considered (Eldrazi Monument for example). I did play Coat of Arms early on and I always found it a bit underwhelming since it gave no evasion as well as there being an issue with it against token decks in that they tend to outnumber our vamps in a lot of cases. Since I last played Coat of Arms though I have gone to a much swarmier build though so who knows, I might have to put some consideration to it again. When most of your cards all fall into similar categories of what they do though Possibility Storm does get a lot stronger. Obviously we still have some stronger effects in the deck such as the gods and some specific anthem creatures but in a lot of cases when I just put 1 & 2 mana vampires in, most any result is about the same. I think that running a consistently small curve actually increases the consistency of what to expect out of it than if we were playing a bunch of cards across a bunch of mana tiers. I don't have 7 mana creatures in hand that might turn into a 3 mana Wood Elves in this deck. Possibility Storm is potentially a card that hurts a lot of responsive decks though in that if you cast a wrath of god and turn it into a Green Sun's Zenith you just threw that card away. Casting spot removal and getting a counterspell also can be sort of similar. The more situational and responsive a deck is, the more Possibility Storm is going to screw with them.
Mass Reanimation - Yea, some decks are better than others when it comes to reanimation tactics. For example if a deck has a lot of sac outlets with ETB / Dies / Leaves Play triggers you can sac a board full of creatures and then Living Death them all back for a generated value. Most of the vampires we run generate value on cast because of edgar and then generate value by staying in play. It makes reanimation a lot worse because we are given a lot less reason to power play reanimation via a sac outlet. I gave an example to someone else who was playing victimize if you were running a Solemn Simulacrum style of creature you may want to sacrifice it and rez it repeatedly. Sacrificing ETB / Dies creatures to victimize to rez 2 more creatures of similar nature is a great play but when it comes to vampires your reanimation is really only a tool to try to keep you in play so you would be playing it very much more defensively or reactionary to how your opponents are playing. The stronger deck to utilize the reanimation effect in this case is a deck that can proactively use said tactics for value. In this sense, reanimation for vamps is more of a strict recovery tool and in such it tends to be inferior to just drawing more cards here. This is not always the case but because we are not a type of deck that has ETB / Dies / Leaves Play value it kind of is more true here.
Fell the Mighty - it is a card that I have given some consideration. I go back and forth on what kind of wraths to run to be honest. In some cases Retribution of the Meek can be great especially if your opponents show up with a large force of big creatures but more realistically our goal is to swarm and so a few big threats are not as big of an issue as someone making say 30 tokens on us. It is much harder for a lot of our evasion to get us past a swarm of creatures than it is for a few big creatures so the point of wrathing an opponent in a deck like this is mostly to keep them from taking board dominance or threatening to kill us back. I do think that Fell the Mighty could be good but one of my issues is that generally you are going to have to cast it on a non token creature and rely on spot removal not happening. Some of my hesitancy has also been that its a 5 mana spell and I have been trying to keep my curve low but realistically, we only have a few cards that care about the cost of spells but keeping costs low also means we can tempo play our cards a little better. I do think that this is another wrath that could be considered alongside Austere Command (which for very similar reasons I have not included). When it comes to a lot of our spot removal and sweepers we are playing them responsively as needed rather than proactively so we don't normally NEED them to be as cheap but it helps us to keep playing through to have things be cheap. I did include Mizzium Mortars lately because my issue is more towards lots of small blockers than a few big ones but I think when it comes to my removal and sweepers I still need to do a lot of testing to really see what it is that this deck needs. I will toss this one into the considerations too and with more games I hope to have a better understanding of what works and what doesn't when it comes to answers / sweepers.
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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.
Take your time on testing, not trying to rush you with cards to add. Merely trying to find cards that might be considerable useful for the strategy. We are somewhat in the same boat. I have been playing my deck since the start of when the commander product got released and am always searching to improve it.
I saw you also moved to this hyper aggro decklist and thought maybe this might be a good direction to go and I find you make a lot of valid points and opinions on all the card choices from what I read.
Am gonna try and test my deck a bit more with some of the changes I made also. I don't run exactly the same cards as you run though, I don't own a Wheel of Fortune for example and some other cards I don't have either. I don't wanna 1v1 copy your list and be done either. Cause that is just lame imo. I always test my decks myself and make adjustments to what I find not working in the meta I am in. Cause every meta is different, thus I might find things not working where they might for you.
But overall I think you made some fair and good points for Possibility Storm.. Am definitely also considering it more and more after reading why you think it would work fairly good/great for the deck.
I also concur that you are probably right about the big creatures vs swarm debate. The last few games I played last week or the week before that I played against a few tribal decks.. 1 was Krenko goblin swarm and the other was elves. This put me in a bind, I had games where I could kill the Krenko player only to be ousted by the elves deck that got to mass mana into big creatures and overrun with Ezuri to death... This also made me rethink some of my deck choices and that maybe I was running still a bit to many high end cards.
Always looking to improve the deck though and I find it nice to see what others think about cards even if I might not always agree. Mizzium Mortars would indeed be a good card vs other swarm decks and in most cases would indeed answer those, the issue I have with it in a way is that it doesn't kill Elves at all (Ezuri can regen them or they can overrun to be 5 toughness..) though Fell the mighty also would not work in that case (cause no 'can't regenerate' clause on it), which is overall the issue I have with a lot of the mass removal/sweepers that we can run.
I was looking for my cards to add, apparently couldn't find my Purphoros.. so cannot test it unless I find it...
I totally get you on not netdecking. Its something I have never done myself but I do love having a good discussion on cards. The point of forums like these are to be able to discuss strategies, and card inclusions. I still have a LOT of testing of this new list and like you said what works for one person might not work for the next.
Possibility Storm - I think I have a lot of reasons I do want to try it out but for now I think I am going to try to put it off for a little bit until I can do more testing. It is an effect that I have a lot of reasons to toy with it and see what it can do but at the same time I need to restrain myself a little and get more testing in before I make more changes for the time being.
Anti Swarm Answers - yea, its something I have been trying to solve myself. Because we are also kind of swarm we really want one sided answers that wont completely hose us. Orzhov Pontiff and Zealous Persecution could possibly work but they are a little narrow in what they can do which is why I originally went for Mizzium Mortars. Orzhov Pontiff could be interesting with a repeat sac outlet though as you could -2/-2 opponents creatures with it. If you play against a lot of tribal decks you might consider Engineered Plague as well. The hard part is that its hard to come up with something that is like... Toxic Deluge for opponents stuff without it costing like a million mana. Really, I wish we had access to Cyclonic Rift lol.
Purpheros - he got expensive too. I think I have like 4 of them myself but most of those come from having played standard and limited through that timeframe.
You could play ashnod's altar and try to jam some big mana through it for big x spells. My issue with that tactic though is that Ashnod's really doesn't fit this build all that well and if you are in a situation where you can sac a bunch of tokens for a ton of mana then you are probably in a good position anyways. Adding the big x mana spells to the deck in any sort of relevant number would make a lot hinge on this altar so I don't think it nicely fits the build as you really need to get a few very specific cards together that on their own don't really fit that well here. I prefer to build on a standpoint of trying to get cards that all interact well with the same basic principal and adding those would add cards that can work well but require a specific setup for it to be good. You might as well add Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion along that thinking because it could win the game.
My point is more that my goal is often cards that fit a build on their own and if you can go off big with them great. In this case Ashnods as well as any X mana spell really don't go well into this build because neither one on their own contribute all that significantly to what the deck wants to do.
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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.
Possibility Storm: Wow, I love that card and it indeed seems like a cool addition to this kind of deck. I think I'll make room for it in my own deck before I play with it tomorrow and try to see how it goes
Removal always depends upon the deck. The majority of the single target removal can be anything like path to exile, swords to plowshares, terminate, dreadbore, vindicate, Anguished Unmaking, and Utter End or any of the modular removal like mortify the meta in your area always will influence what removal you pick as well as your collection/budget. As a aside unless its a repeatable effect don't really bother with lighting bolt and regular burn. Unless its super efficient and can hit all players either multiple times or just massive amounts cheap its not really worth the space.
If you play this as a swarm deck you really DONT want to add much mass creature removal unless its something like Hallowed Burial, martial coup, kindred dominance, decree of pain, extinction, In Garruk's Wake, plague wind, and MAYBE fumigate. Even then you may only want to play two or three depending. The above stuff is not all the most efficient but the most hurt your opponent more than you mostly. I mean in white and black you have upwards of 3 to 4 base wrath of god effects at 4cc minimum. That's not counting things like disenchant you may want to play or its variants or Vandalblast. Id play a few games in your meta to see what types of decks people play before totally setting you removal. Some folks use more artifacts some more enchantments.
So I guess two things, I ended up playing a few games last night but really I didnt get very good data from the games so I wont bore anyone with the details. There were a few people in from Seattle and the first game I was playing vamps I lost to like a T3/4 Doomsday from Grenzo. That player then felt bad because they realized we were not playing to that level and moved to some hatebears deck that tutored for Umezawa's Jitte and then smashed in a Humility. I missed multiple land drops and just kind of floundered so I scooped out of that one having drawn almost all 3-4 mana cards while getting capped at 2 mana. I am going to chalk some of that up to things that normally are not in my playgroup though. The first game I am just not gearing towards and the second one was a little bit of unlucky draws combined with multiple bad situations happening across from me. I probably could have played through the Humility if I had gotten lands and or a better curve but I was drawing like poop.
I am thinking of adding Legion's Landing to my Markov. You've had some hesitation so I'm curious about your thoughts.
So, its a card I actually like in my current build but I think in general its kind of trashy. So, you really want to be moving really fast with a lot of cheap vamps for it to work. I use it kind of like another Mox style of effect that also comes with a vamp and no card disadvantage. Its ability to create tokens is the biggest hot garbage I have ever seen so I consider it more of a tempo ramp than a token maker in my case. I think it really gains more when you are moving quick with cheaper vamps than if you are running higher mana vamps. You really want to be able to flip it by like turn 3 if you have it in your opener.
I honestly think there are a lot more lists I would not run it in than ones I would but my list happened to get to the point that being a single token on theme plus a tempo ramp was good enough for one mana.
Possibility Storm: Wow, I love that card and it indeed seems like a cool addition to this kind of deck. I think I'll make room for it in my own deck before I play with it tomorrow and try to see how it goes
Fire covenant - I think I am going to bring it in for Retribution of the Meek and see how things go. I ordered a copy a while back and I have just been trying to put off more changes.
Possibility Storm - Yea I think it has a lot of promise. I think I am ready to make room for it to see how things go. Let me know if you get any testing with it.
I would think Legion's Landing as a great mana accelerant for the deck.. I don't own a copy, but if I do get one I wil defo try it out myself..
The token is worth about half the mana (cause normal creature would get you a token, thus 2 bodies instead of 1), but mana accel is mostly worth 2 mana (when searching for lands that is) Thus depending on how wel we can flip it on average is where we can see how good it is...
I think a nice trick might be make a creature turn 1, make a creature turn 2 or make 2 if possible... turn 3 play this then swing with what you have (probably 3 or 4 creatures) and it wil flip on the turn you play it... (making it less susceptible for answers - even though an answer to it wil put that player behind 1 card and not really gain them advantage)
I think the issues most have is with it's ability to make tokens, which isn't all that great, cause it costs you actually 4 mana (the land has to tap itself also), but I would view it differently.. as it's a token + mana accel, the ability is just gravy and not needed at all...
- Still haven't found my Purphoros... really sucks.. oh wel.. I wil see if I can test friday with the changes I made, have been a bit to busy irl to get some plays the previous weeks.
Might add possibility storm to try out - but with the many changes I have made I rather test without first probably.
Although I do get why it might be a fun inclusion, for me I feel that pump would better fit that spot.. ^^
- About one sided removal - Fire Covenant should be good indeed.. for me it has been quite good so far.. Zealous Persecution and such also might be good, kinda depends on the meta I am thinking.. with high end cards (big creatures and ramp, etc) it might not be as good..
Yea that's mostly how I play it. The token making option of it is really only something I would do if I run out of action and don't have anything to do just because the mana cost for what it does is way too high.
Purphy -
Fire Covenant - im going to make room for it right now. I agree that while Zealous Persecution might be good it seems kind of niche as to when its going to work.
Hello guys! I just bought the commander deck and started modifying it! It is my first commander deck so I dont know the format at all! I started cutting cards starting from manabase, adding cards from my modern pool. Now i am stucked with the rest of the deck. Is commander a format which requires tons of removal to be added? What about mana artifacts like the various signets?
Removal depends on the meta a lot. Its generally good to run cheap removal to interact but in a deck like this I primarily run removal to try to interact with cards that specifically shut me down. Propaganda effects, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Humility, Moats, Aether Flash, Night of Souls' Betrayal are some examples of cards that would really hurt to play against without an answer. Because I am running a bit light on the answers I try to run more generic removal effects and generally I try my best to not use them until someone plays something that is going to block me from my gameplan. This is an aggro deck so I often try to swarm and kill people before their value cards really matter. Depending on the deck and gameplan you run different amounts of removal. Because this list is generally removal light, I try to make that removal be versatile which is why I have opted for cards that often clear out multiple cards or can hit anything over something like say Swords to Plowshares.
Ramp - ramp is usually good but it really depends on what the goal of your deck is. Because my curve is so low here I run more of tempo style of ramp over traditional ramp like sigents. If and when you have a commander you plan to curve into play that costs say 4-5 mana is a good example of times you might want to consider signets as well as things like Mana Vault. If your gameplan tends to be one where you have a later game commander in the 6-7+ thats when you might consider a later game ramp like say Worn Powerstone / Thran Dynamo. In a lot of cases what ramp you run from artifacts depends a lot on what kind of deck you are playing. Because I am trying to move so fast with a low curve I opted to go with Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, Mana Crypt, Legion's Landing, and Gemstone Caverns which would be considered more of tempo style of ramp.
Mana Curve - playing with some big vamps is actually normal. I am kind of breaking the mold with my approach and seeing how viable it is to move on an excessively low curve. Edgar Markov gives the most value when moving more bodies quickly not to mention if you ever want to cast him you really want a swarm of bodies in play which also encourages a high turnover list that pushes creatures into play quickly. Some of the hardest thing to overcome with having a low curve and moving fast is finding your card draw consistently and keeping it.
Removal always depends upon the deck. The majority of the single target removal can be anything like path to exile, swords to plowshares, terminate, dreadbore, vindicate, Anguished Unmaking, and Utter End or any of the modular removal like mortify the meta in your area always will influence what removal you pick as well as your collection/budget. As a aside unless its a repeatable effect don't really bother with lighting bolt and regular burn. Unless its super efficient and can hit all players either multiple times or just massive amounts cheap its not really worth the space.
If you play this as a swarm deck you really DONT want to add much mass creature removal unless its something like Hallowed Burial, martial coup, kindred dominance, decree of pain, extinction, In Garruk's Wake, plague wind, and MAYBE fumigate. Even then you may only want to play two or three depending. The above stuff is not all the most efficient but the most hurt your opponent more than you mostly. I mean in white and black you have upwards of 3 to 4 base wrath of god effects at 4cc minimum. That's not counting things like disenchant you may want to play or its variants or Vandalblast. Id play a few games in your meta to see what types of decks people play before totally setting you removal. Some folks use more artifacts some more enchantments.
I did consider some more expensive sweeper effects because Austere Command would be really sweet with this build but ultimately I am trying to keep the curve low. Its possible with more testing I might change some and allow for more cards in the 4+ mana range. I am kind of slowly making observations and making changes as they happen and really I would love some sort of artifact / enchantment sweeper option for this list. I have gone as far as to consider Purify but for the one mana difference I think Austere Command has a lot more power.
DECK CHANGES:
Cloudstone Curio -> Possibility Storm I have yet to ever see Cloudstone Currio so its kind of odd to change it out given that but I don't know how much I really want to juggle one drops. Still, it seems very expensive to cast the Currio and then play repeat creatures following it so it still does not sound like a cheap card to me. Possibility Storm is a card I want to get in the list to test so lets go I guess.
As some more info, I did see Impact Tremors last night and honestly, its seemed a little more questionable of late as I test the deck more. In my previous list I was building to syphon everyone's life off and I ran things like Opheomancer which really did make that a stronger play. I am contemplating moving it to possibly more removal such as Unexpectedly Absent or maybe even Aura of Silence.
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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.
@dachivale - I believe Cloudstone is in the deck because of the amount of 1 mana costed vampires the deck runs along with Edgar's Eminence ability is a great way to recoup after a board wipe or just to get that finally wide swing.
@pathfinder - Throne of the God-Pharaoh, have you tried this one out. I feel like this not only speeds up the clock, is low casting, but also helps protect against Sleep effects.
I would say it kind of depends on your meta if either Unexpectedly Absent or Aura of Silence would be better, I would probably go with the latter overall though...
Also good to read your write up, was thinking of adding Impact Tremors, but don't own the card... Now I know it's only a common and thus not expensive and all, but having to order new cards to try them kinda sucks.. so hearing it wasn't as impactful is good in that regard..
I agree on Legions Landing and other mana accel/tempo.. I don't have the more expensive ones, like the Moxen unfortunately, but wil definitely give Gemstone Caverns a try as wel..
Also, I always felt that Cloudstone Curio seemed like an odd inclusion, I saw it in your list.. didn't really question it, though I guess I should have said earlier that I didn't feel it would be a good inclusion here.. In other decks that use it like for example Animar - they can abuse the comes into play or to make Animar bigger or to get into infinite untaps, etc... It's more a card for combo enabling than bouncing your aggro creatures.. That is my opinion on that card.. And with that I would say that Possibility Storm would be a better inclusion, cause it fits our strategy better and can mess up other people more than it would ever do our deck I think at least...
Have yet to get some more testing done myself and I don't run exactly the same cards, probably not close in some regards.. Mana base is more wonky on my end.. (don't have all the best lands.. money is limited and don't wanna spend it on ABU duel lands for example)
For a card to possibly consider also I would like to add - Bloodchief Ascension might be a nice inclusion... ^^
It is quite easy to deal 2 damage every turn (due to our amount of early creatures) and when it is turned on, every card an opponent plays that goes to the graveyard (instants/sorcery's when cast, creatures, etc when they die) they take damage/lose life...
Not sure how wel that card might do in reality, but on paper it feels like it might be a great inclusion..
As I have moved the deck to move faster there is also the issue that I often want to play my one drop on one mana. Then I have to kind of give up my turn 2 for impact because I need to play it before other things. I like Purpheros more because he is harder to remove as well as hitting harder and also serving as an anthem if I want. Impact Tremors can still be good but I really need to curve it and then have it stick for a good bit (which it hasn't for me of late).
Cloudstone Curio - it was an attempt to generate continuous value. I still see some issues when I don't hit draw or if my draw doesn't work. I need to test more and get more info but I have had issues with some of my elements of card advantage thus far. Ad Nausium / Null Profusion can be a little harder to get to their mana because I run a few less lands and if I draw them early they can be awkward to work with. I have had a few opening hands with them and I don't really know what to do about them because they mostly sit in hand and I hope I can get the lands to work with them. Like I said though, I need to test more as it stands.
Landbase - I have a few that I had to adjust for what I had on hand but I want to circle back sometime soon and reassess on some of my lands. I noticed that some lands like Volrath's Stronghold have felt a little weaker in here because I find it very important to hit my colors and recovering a lot of my vamps has been less of a concern of mine.
Bloodchief Ascension - I don't think it would work that well to be honest. It is still really slow to go active and then it needs to live a long time. Cards going to my opponents graveyard will still happen some with fetches and possibly chump blocks but I think ultimately its going to take a long time to go active and I don't expect it to proc much. I don't believe you can get more than one counter per turn either so it just feels..... wayyyy slow. I also dont like to assume that I will get anything in my opening hand so this is a card that falls off really hard if you get it later too.
@dachivale - I believe Cloudstone is in the deck because of the amount of 1 mana costed vampires the deck runs along with Edgar's Eminence ability is a great way to recoup after a board wipe or just to get that finally wide swing.
@pathfinder - Throne of the God-Pharaoh, have you tried this one out. I feel like this not only speeds up the clock, is low casting, but also helps protect against Sleep effects.
my goal was to use it sort of like a Sacred Mesa for vampires. There are just some concerns with how much mana it takes to get going as well as the fact that this deck is not a big mana deck.
Throne of the God-Pharaoh - honestly, I have been having more and more issues with cards that are good when I am doing good. It does have the advantage that if I can turn my creatures sideways at all it will ensure a bunch of damage and it can be used after I get a bunch of creatures in play but I still have an issue with it that if I can turn a bunch of creatures sideways I am probably doing ok already so there is the question of it is a winmore play. It also pairs poorly with Reconnaissance which is too bad. I will give it a little more thought but there is the question of if I can already turn sideways with a bunch of dudes if this is winmore. If I cant afford to turn sideways with a bunch of dudes then this card does nothing for me.
@ Temur_wolf - Still don't think that it is worth it, because you don't really generate anything except for a token (wasting the pressure you can put on the opponent)
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I have had a few plays off all my decks last friday, have played Edgar in 1 v 1 twice - won 1 game, lost 1 game.. was vs Kaalia (didn't get removal against her in the first game.. and when I did get it, he had an answer to counter my removal.. as in protection for Kaalia..)
Had a game of 3 people - Won that one.. even after a sweeper I got back.. had my own sweeper when I got a bit in trouble.. (Fell the mighty) worked really wel for me.. didn't kill anything from me and all opponents creatures got killed, going in for a bit of damage before winning.. ^^
Had a 4 player game, I won that one also, although I could have lost I would add, partly due to my own 'stupidity' and overcommitment to attacking.. cause the player after me was playing Karona, False God and went hellbent on having everyone attack me with it.. but one person didn't cause he felt it was lame to just have 3 people attack me... (which saved me and had me able to kill all 3 of the other players.. killing the one that let me live last obviously..). The reason I said my 'stupidity', was cause I knew the player after me had Karona, but I still went tapped out.. although I would add.. I would have killed him, if the other player (the one that also agreed to attack me with Karona) didn't bounce one of my creatures before damage... (the reason I went tapped out in the first place..)
Most other games didn't play Vamps cause I knew they where not great vs certain decks (and everyone knew what the deck would do...)at that point and also wanted to get some plays with Cats and Mairsil... (Cats sucked quite badly for the most part btw... wil change it back to my White/green Selvala deck which is easily a lot stronger..) Won all games I played with Mairsil (though that is not really anything to do with Edgar XD)
I think overall the low curve worked really wel, needed a bit of answers sometimes.. but being able to pressure even with only 3 mana (where I got stuck on for the most part of the 4 player game), I had 4/4 and 5/5 Vampires due to Rakish Heir on turn 5 I believe.. which definitely did a lot of work for me in the early game... ^^
Good to hear some game reports. I wish I had some meaningful reports to give in the last few weeks but between not being at games and the games I played being fast combo and then landscrew into humility wrath.... I guess I hope to give some better report this week.
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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.
Some of the highlights of the games:
Really from the games I played, I loved the vamps I was running. I had some mana issues which might have been in part that I was not as pro active on turning cards over as I had expected myself to be doing. I was often prioritizing playing more board over playing the recover plan. When it comes to my mana issues, I never saw any of my tempo ramp in all of the games. I found myself running out of lands often at the 3ish mark several times and it felt bad. To some degree I have to accept that I cant hyper murder everyone even though my curve is low I did that so that my draw had more possibilities to hit harder and move cards better.
DECK CHANGES:
Honestly, I need to stop feeling like I need to kill everyone immediately. Yes this list has a low curve but that is in part to try to use some of the amazing recovery tools available to a lower curve. Several of the cards I did not really see yet and I really do need more data before I can really say anything definitively. The list was a BLAST to play with as a low curve though and I really want to keep toying with things and see where it gets me. I feel like I am back trying to build Edric here and realizing I want / need a low curve all over again. Most of these changes are still very experimental and its possible that I may circle back to some of these cards but I need to test everything a lot more. I really like that it feels like there is a lot of complexity in how to build Edgar for being a tribal deck.
Adding in two situational wraths might seem odd but in some cases because I was not killing everyone that fast I was still encountering big creatures blocking or attacking me back. Some amount of this was on account that there were only three of us that night and I only brought two decks so people were kind of meta gaming me (stares at Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist). I do somewhat want to go to the mid stage of the game as when I am killing people and thats when some evasion or wraths are needed to connect at times.
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I'm currently considering lowering my curve and dropping most of the reanimate synergies except for Haakon and Razaketh, so and I'll check to see if I can grab a few ideas from your list!
Custom set projects:
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Elestral: Astronomy, Weather and Duality (Currently in early design.)
Multiplayer commander decks
RGWU Bruse and Thrasios: Enchanted Alliance | BR Grenzo's Jail of Malevolence | RWU Shu Yun's Teachings | B Toshiro Umezawa's Eternal Journey | WU Ephara's City of Wonders
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Beyond that, I exploded out quite nicely. I was last to go (originally but the new guy joining became last). I had Gemstone Caverns so I opened with that exiling a 4th land I had. My T1: was land + Carrier Thrall. T2: land + Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle and I was off to the races. So, all game I had fairly good tempo but every time I played anything that wasnt a vanilla vampire it seemed to get blown up with the exception of a Skullclamp that somehow lived like all game.
I drew and played a Mardu Ascendancy behind the couple of vampires and made a few goblin tokens that were fairly good. On turn four or five I got Iroas, God of Victory which I slammed in and proceeded to beat face but immediately after that someone did a Merciless Eviction for enchantments (three Merciless Eviction for enchantments went off that game....).
The long end of this story was that I kept drawing fairly well off of Skullclamp but somehow I ended up keeping too much of the draw in my hand. When I finally pushed some pressure in I killed one of the 5 opponents and pushed most of them to the 10ish life mark utilizing Sanctum Seeker with 13 attacking vampires and Reconnaissance (tutored with Enlightned that turn). In the turn after that I lost almost all of my vmipres, 60ish life, and really everything I had going on.
Soon after that there was some kind of bad decisions made by my opponents and the game ended because too many of them were freaked out over me after what I did and they literally decided that I was a problem after I was not instead of worrying about 13 2/2 flying pegasi. The pegasus person threw the game away and did not kill the sunforger player who tutored for boros charm (he was at 4 life) and killed him.
I was a little salty afterwards but I think it did give me some valuable data as to some of my cards.
So, what was my take away this week? I have a few cards that require on too many other cards for them to be good and I have to accept I am going to get swept a lot / spot removed a lot. I want to take some of the over complexity out of a few cards and continue to lean down my curve as I continue to want more and more one drops if possible.
DECK CHANGES:
So, with this I pick up 3 more anthems which will be interesting to see how they fit. I think I am just going to order most of the 1-2 mana vamps to just have them on hand but I am always interested in more cheap drop vamps with this list so far. Really of these changes, I like most of them but I keep going back and forth with Yawgmoth's Will and Living Death. I will probably just ask myself which I would prefer if I draw / could tutor for either and see if that helps me sort it out. I could possibly use another evasion outlet too but I am still a little uncertain of Cover of Darkness as it sits.
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[Modern] Allies
It's really hard to make aggressive edh deck.
Small fast aggro don't usually cut it. perhaps some think like winter orb or contamination might help to destabalise the opponents.
ranger of eos
Intangible Virtue
Break Through the Line
Thanks, its a lot of trial and error right now. Normally speaking this strategy is kind of flawed but there are so many big draw effects that you can run off of a low curve that its been working out for me.
Stasis effects - given all of the draw I am getting away with I am actually using most of my mana each turn even with the low curve. This is kind of defendant on getting some draw and sticking it but so far its been working for me. Its actually more likely that Stax effects would work better with this build given all of the cheap extra bodies we get but I have been hesitant to go down that route yet. Stax effects can be strong but there are actually not that many effects that I would want to play that are legal. MLD would also probably fit assuming someone was inclined to run such things but for now I am trying to run somewhat of a fair deck with a low curve and see how it pans out. I do actually enjoy fighting some uphill battles over trying to move to non interaction strategies and so I kind of enjoy the challenge of tuning and seeing what to do next. Its been fun coming back every week and asking how to make the deck better.
blade of the bloodchief - Its possible its just kind of an odd shift as I was going for more of a swarm / anthem build right now and it fits more of a sac / etb based build. I could take a bunch of small dudes and turn them into one big dude but outside of someone like damage sweeping me its hard to say when I would try to make such a move. It also takes somewhat of reliable sac outlets to pull it off.
ranger of eos - I considered it early on but ultimately its sort of a draw 2 effect. I do have some fairly strong 1 drops if I got to choose which I got but in the end I was comparing it against a lot of powerful draw effects and the one shot of it plus being 4 mana made it feel a little on the heavy end of the curve for what its doing. Tymna the Weaver for example has a fairly good option to draw 1-3 cards / turn that she lives and she costs one less mana to play. I could see ranger fitting into a build like this but when I was building it I opted not to run it because of how much power the draw I included had in comparison. I think his toolboxing is probably stronger than his draw element given all of this but I don't know how much I value that. Its also valid to question if its better to run Imperial Recruiter / Recruiter of the Guard over Ranger of Eos given the one less mana as well as bigger toolboxing opportunities. I don't think that any of those choices are wrong, but I did opt to cut them for the time being because I think that the mana spent on casting them is actually kind of heavy handed for this list.
Intangible Virtue - I do struggle with just buffing my tokens / nontokens. I ideally want to buff both and ideally put it on a vampire body so that it has synergy with the deck as well as makes a token that the anthem can buff. Keeping the anthems on vampire bodies is very strong and it is my preference but I am looking at and considering other cards. Some of the advantage of Intangible Virtue is its low cost but at the same time it will only be buffing approximately half of my creatures which I think is kind of unfortunate. I am adding the planeswalker anthems in part because they will guarentee me the value of their anthem for the rest of the game but I am not beyond considering additional anthems. I think that Eldrazi Monument was very good in my previous build before I went low curve and its something I could see adapting to this list as well. My issue with the low cost anthems is that I wonder if they do enough for me. Most of the anthem all of your creatures cost 3 mana and so I figured for one more mana I could put it on an emblem and make it harder for opponents to remove. Being a swarm based deck it has put a lot of things in play that can be removed so I worry that a small anthem might not be strong enough and it might also not stay. When it comes to non vampire anthems I tend to prefer the planeswalker anthems and the 5-6 mana anthems like say Homura, Human Ascendant (I went down on my sac outlets though), Dictate of Heliod, or Eldrazi Memorial. I am still kind of figuring some of this out and given that the 5-6 mana anthems hit harder when it comes to Ad Nausium / Bob I have opted to try to keep the curve lower for now and see how things do without them.
Break Through the Line - Its a nice mix of evasion + haste. My concern is that its kind of mana intensive for a swarm based deck. Ideally I want my evasion to be cheap and apply to all of my creatures at the same time. Pyreheart Wolf / Bedlam are some examples of effects I have considered. Sometimes disabling all blockers though gets all the attackers to come to you. Pyreheart Wolf seems like a great card but is a little slow and it itself is probably going to be one of the first things blocked which is a pain. As it stands, I want to go through a little closer and look at all of the evasion options because right now Iros / Reconnaissance seem to be probably the best and Goblin War Drumbs seems to follow them up. I probably need to do a little homework / searching to check a bunch of other options out.
EDIT: I decided to do an additional change to my list.
DECK CHANGE:
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On Virtue, I think you should really consider it. You make a decent amount of tokens from markov and its the only +1 other than Shared Triumph that isn't going to screw you by being even sided or 4CC+. I would have suggested Glorious Anthem but double white turn three might be pushing it, and its not the best anthem late game. Virtue has the added benefit that you can get defensive and offensive with your tokens. The only other option I could seriously suggest is Door of Destinies. Admittedly you could add both virtue and shared together but that removes some tech from the game. As a funny you could also put intangible and Always Watching together as well but it would still have the turn three issue of double white. Another thing I was thinking of suggesting is dynacharge but I don't know how well you swarm. I mean id assume its decent unless your stopped but other than that ......
On break your probably right that its too mana intensive but I figured that haste and unblockable would fit your deck sooo well. I thought about suggesting adding haste enchantments but other than Hammer of Purphoros, In the Web of War, Fervor, Mass Hysteria the only two I'd actually personally use would be hammer and in the web just because of the utility.
Blade of the Bloodchief - I cant actually recall ever having any sac outlets since I changed my build. My previous build had more sac in it. I also don't think I can think of a case I would sacrifice to bring an equipped creature up to being big. It really defeats the point of running anthems to consolidate all of the power in one creature. If you got it into play and were expecting someone to say Pyroclasm then I guess but that seems like a lot of what if situations to plan around.
Intangible Virtue - I still see a lot of issues with it, only half of my strategy is incorporating tokens and honestly the creatures I am interested in connecting with are primarily some of the non tokens as I have some that have triggers on attacking and some with triggers on hitting players. When it comes to a question of defending, what if I just play some more creatures and defend with them? I really have not had issues defending myself as I am usually the aggressor with this build. I think that the single buff anthems that add no evasion are just not enough of a buff to be honest. When I can get them on an actual vampire its not so bad as I get another body out of the deal as well. When it comes to the idea of what if I draw this card right after being blown up is when I really don't like the idea of a small anthem that does nothing else. Shared Triumph is probably a lot more likely to be something I would consider but even then, I don't think it adds enough to my gameplan. Whenever you get a non creature anthem thats small its going to complicate things in some ways and be a bit situational as to when you want to play them. I opted to add the planeswalkers in part because the emblem is literally untouchable once its fired off and so its not adding more stuff to get blown up once I fire them off. While an enchantment would be faster, I don't think the difference in 2 to 4 mana is actually fast enough to make up for the fact that it leaves another thing on board to be blown up if I get swept. I also am very busy with my curve of my creatures in the first few turns given what my vampire curve looks like so a 2 drop non creature really isn't going to get played before I get my hand of guys into play.
Shared Triumph - as I mentioned above, I have issues with noncreature anthems in that they are awkward to time playing in that I have to play my creatures too, they require a good board to play them into, and they complicate my board further for wraths.
Glorious Anthem - Its ok but buffing my non vamps is a small matter for one more mana. Spear of Heliod is fairly similar if you are running this with the small downside of also being an artifact it can serve as removal.
Door of Destinies - My issue with this card is that it takes time to spin this up. I want to be curving my hand in before this so if I get this, suddenly I want to be casting a TON of vamps behind it so its super slow to start and you need a lot of gas behind it. In a lot of ways its kind of a similar issue as with Cathars' Crusade / Bloodlord of Vaasgoth in that its kind of expensive to cast and then needs to be followed up with a ton of dudes. Its far better to have your anthems kick in quickly and affect your current board over being a setup for the future as it means that your opponents get time to interact with you and your plans.
Always Watching - Its the same issue I have with Intangible Virtue really.
Dynacharge - or better yet, Vampiric Fury. Mostly, its a one shot effect and I have to be swarming fairly hard for a one shot buff to do sufficient damage.
Haste Effects - Mostly, I don't want to spend a card / turn casting an effect to give me haste. Cards that are noncreatures are important enablers. Its true that I could possibly get more damage in if I had haste but the haste outlet itself needs to be cast, it consumes a card, and I don't have that many card in the deck that would directly benefit from haste other than doing some output. Its easier to just not worry about that and keep moving forward with a gameplan that does not require that given how few vampires care about haste.
Whenever it comes to a noncreature effect I ask myself what it does for me. Ideally speaking I want my noncreatures to clear out opposing defenses and get me to connect to kill them. Sometimes spot removal is necessary in cases where things like Magus of the Moat / Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite are involved otherwise I probably would run less removal than I do right now. Evasion, Draw, Ramp, and Removal are the primary reasons I include noncreature effects in here.
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Its possible to do MLD or stax tactics with something like this. I would actually probably decrease the amount of draw / recovery for that kind of stuff though because I do actually actively use most of my mana each turn as it stands. I think several adjustments would have to be made to play the deck that way as well because when you run MLD its usually best to have a big threat rather than several small ones. If someone were to get say a 3/3 into play before it went off its possible that could be a problem for the LD strategy as you are going to slow down your own development as well.
I still think that Smokestack would probably pan out better than an Armageddon just given what the deck can do.
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Its possible. I did consider Thalia and I think she is still something I may still explore. My issue with her is that if she is not drawn in like the first 2-3 turns I think she is really losing a lot of her value. Its possible something like Aura of Silence might fit a little better given it still gives you the opportunity of spot removal if drawn later.
It is true that I move quikcly but my overal goal was not neccessarily a fast kill with this line of building. The point of building this way was twofold
It is true that having a low and fast curve could be combined with stasis and disruption effects and it probably would be fairly good. If you however are getting a good continuous turnover of card draw it can hurt you as well though too so for now I am just seeing if I can jam more cards through play than my opponents and rely on unfair tempo draw to refill. If you were to utilize a Winter Orb effect to buy time it will slow yourself down as well which will also mean that tempo drawing cards and playing them will also be harder to do.
With any hatebear effect you always rely on that effect hitting your opponent. If you were to run a bunch of Winter Orb effects and your opponent has Sol Ring + Signet opener you are going to lose your ass off. If you play a T2 Thalia vs creatures.deck its going to suck. In a lot of ways these effects are all reliant on meta or deck specific lineups for them to work well. They also require you to make room for a package of cards that does not further your own gameplan (which in this case is to play a bunch of dudes). I felt in this case that it was actually better to focus on what I am trying to do than to see if I could situationally disrupt my opponents.
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@MtG_Maniac. Also, Keldon Firebombers is totally Mass Land Destruction. It's potentially worse than just Mass Land Destruction, as it comes on a body which means you can flicker/recur it and keep everyone at 3 mana forever.
Current EDH
Akroma W | Tymna and Bruse RBW
I was hesitant to include Cavern of Souls originally because so many of my vampires are kind of junk stuff but from the perspective of early fixing for the vamps it might be alright. I originally included Path of Ancestry in my list but ETB tapped is really not ok in retrospect.
DECK CHANGES:
I am looking forward to testing the deck with so many more anthems than last time. This week I cant make it to play thought because I am helping with a Halloween event on our usual magic night. I will have to wait and see what next week brings.
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I guess it's on the top end of your curve, but it really really helps refill the board after a wrath effect.
Hey thanks, I am still feeling a LOT of things out as I have only moved to this build a few weeks ago. I do not by any means have all of this figured out yet but I keep trying and testing things.
Anointed Procession - I actually ran it in my previous version. I ended up cutting it as I moved to the lower curve but to be honest, it wasn't ever all that great for me. Given that you spend a card casting it, if that card was just a vampire instead it means that you have to cast THREE vampires after casting Anointed Procession to come out ahead on the bodies (at two vampires after you would be at 6 bodies in both cases but 1/1 vamp tokens are still usually slightly weaker than actual card vampires). Being that it is at 4 mana I really don't want to be hording my early game action for after something like this so the payoff for this card just feels like its really slow to me. I also don't like spending 4 mana to do nothing and then have a slow payoff to follow it up. Its one of those cards where if you can hit it on curve and it sticks for a long time then sure run it but I think its got a lot of problems in most any build to be totally honest. I experimented with Mardu Ascendancy and in the end I cut it but I think it gives a much faster turnover of bodies which makes it probably more ideal. Even with that I cut that card because it felt too dependent on getting something to abuse ETB / Deaths / or evasion.
Fire Covenant - seems interesting and fun. I will see if I can pick up a copy and try it out sometime.
Immortal Servitude / Living Death - Honestly I have continued to be not impressed with any of the reanimation tactics for vamps. Lots of our value comes from casting the vampires instead of just putting them back into play. Last week I was playing an I got bogged, hit by Merciless Eviction, Roon exiled my things with Fiend Hunter, the opposing Edgar exiled 2 of my vamps with Dark Impostor, and I got hit by Return to Dust. I think the only non exile removal I hit last week was Jund Charm (which messed up my small guys / tokens). Last week was a bit of an oddity but that was a *****LOAD of exile removal last week and due to that I have been a little gun shy of trying to rez. I think even without having seen all that exile / grave hate there are still concerns with running all that much rez recovery in that it requires you to get swept and then have them in hand. Those cards are dead until you get swept and then they are still vulnerable to the question of what kind of removal was used as well as a question of if you are getting hit by grave hate.
GODS - Iroas, God of Victory & Purphoros, God of the Forge have been completely amazing. People literally mess their britches when they see either one of these come down. Iroas is in my opinion the best evasion you can get and it makes it so its hard to block your creatures as well as that they do not die attacking which is completely bonkers. I have not yet drawn Athreos, God of Passage so I cant say as much on that end but there are pros and cons to the fact that Athreos goes off of black devotion because I think its actually fairly likely that we can turn Athreos into an attacker / blocker for us in this deck whereas Iroas and Purpheros likely stay as enchantments. Being a creature has pros and cons as it does make them more susceptible to removal but a 5 attack indestructible god for 3 mana who has a very relevant ability sounds nice to me. Iroas, God of Victory and Purphoros, God of the Forge have been incredible essentially every time I have seen them and people do lose their minds when they see them because both of them will just eat people alive. I actually think that Iroas, God of Victory might do more work than Purpheros which is odd to say but we curve in so fast that Iroas is really nice where he is at mana wise where as Purpheros needs time to work his magic. I don't know if I would say they are a must have but Iroas has been the best evasion thus far in my experience of the three cards I devote to evasion.
Tutors - I don't know that there is really any one card I would say I am always getting to be honest. Tutors are sometimes about having the right card at the right time. If I have a bunch of bodies in play already I will probably tutor for evasion or pump (Sanctum Seeker is really good). I think what tutors are actually stronger for though is guaranteeing you have some sort of draw though because a deck like this really falls apart if you dont keep drawing more cards. If I have draw already I am probably just going to go for whatever the current situation calls for. I dont think that tutors are all that necessary but they do give you a little more consistency in your plays.
OTHER CARDS YOU MENTIONED:
Thanks for the suggestions. I am still working out a LOT of things myself. If not for its cost I really would love to include Austere Command given that I only have 2 creatures in the list (plus commander) that would die to the 4+ mana creature kill option of Austere. Its a somewhat slow process for me to make changes in what vampires I run. Most of it comes down to me testing things and going.... that didn't feel quite right. I think that really most of the cheap vampires that exist may be viable and while I don't personally run some of the madness / discard stuff its possible to make that stuff work. I made a lot of changes last week and I really want to get the time to test some of that as I have turned over a good portion of cards.
EDIT: I just thought about the potential of Possibility Storm in this deck. I am kind of blown away by the possibilities in this deck (lol possibilities). Keep in mind if you cast a vampire and find a second vampire off of Possibility Storm you will get 2 vampire tokens. This deck is also primarily a proactive creature based deck so throwing in any creature and getting any creature out really isnt that bad when we have this low of a curve you mostly get about the same thing back out of it. Given our low curve too we can play a lot of the cards we want to have in play before it and afterwards its mostly going to screw with our opponents who probably have more of answers and late game left in their hands.
It seems like a very interesting disruption tool for a deck like this. I am going to work on getting it into my list and trying to test it out.
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Possibility Storm - For now I think I am just going to put it into my considerations as I have made like 10 changes since I last played already and I think while I see some room for it to be promising I also don't want to go through with too many changes at once. I need to move back to testing the new changes I made to see how they are working and work towards what my weak cards are again. The point that it is 5 mana is very true and there are several other cards at 5 mana that could be considered (Eldrazi Monument for example). I did play Coat of Arms early on and I always found it a bit underwhelming since it gave no evasion as well as there being an issue with it against token decks in that they tend to outnumber our vamps in a lot of cases. Since I last played Coat of Arms though I have gone to a much swarmier build though so who knows, I might have to put some consideration to it again. When most of your cards all fall into similar categories of what they do though Possibility Storm does get a lot stronger. Obviously we still have some stronger effects in the deck such as the gods and some specific anthem creatures but in a lot of cases when I just put 1 & 2 mana vampires in, most any result is about the same. I think that running a consistently small curve actually increases the consistency of what to expect out of it than if we were playing a bunch of cards across a bunch of mana tiers. I don't have 7 mana creatures in hand that might turn into a 3 mana Wood Elves in this deck. Possibility Storm is potentially a card that hurts a lot of responsive decks though in that if you cast a wrath of god and turn it into a Green Sun's Zenith you just threw that card away. Casting spot removal and getting a counterspell also can be sort of similar. The more situational and responsive a deck is, the more Possibility Storm is going to screw with them.
Mass Reanimation - Yea, some decks are better than others when it comes to reanimation tactics. For example if a deck has a lot of sac outlets with ETB / Dies / Leaves Play triggers you can sac a board full of creatures and then Living Death them all back for a generated value. Most of the vampires we run generate value on cast because of edgar and then generate value by staying in play. It makes reanimation a lot worse because we are given a lot less reason to power play reanimation via a sac outlet. I gave an example to someone else who was playing victimize if you were running a Solemn Simulacrum style of creature you may want to sacrifice it and rez it repeatedly. Sacrificing ETB / Dies creatures to victimize to rez 2 more creatures of similar nature is a great play but when it comes to vampires your reanimation is really only a tool to try to keep you in play so you would be playing it very much more defensively or reactionary to how your opponents are playing. The stronger deck to utilize the reanimation effect in this case is a deck that can proactively use said tactics for value. In this sense, reanimation for vamps is more of a strict recovery tool and in such it tends to be inferior to just drawing more cards here. This is not always the case but because we are not a type of deck that has ETB / Dies / Leaves Play value it kind of is more true here.
Fell the Mighty - it is a card that I have given some consideration. I go back and forth on what kind of wraths to run to be honest. In some cases Retribution of the Meek can be great especially if your opponents show up with a large force of big creatures but more realistically our goal is to swarm and so a few big threats are not as big of an issue as someone making say 30 tokens on us. It is much harder for a lot of our evasion to get us past a swarm of creatures than it is for a few big creatures so the point of wrathing an opponent in a deck like this is mostly to keep them from taking board dominance or threatening to kill us back. I do think that Fell the Mighty could be good but one of my issues is that generally you are going to have to cast it on a non token creature and rely on spot removal not happening. Some of my hesitancy has also been that its a 5 mana spell and I have been trying to keep my curve low but realistically, we only have a few cards that care about the cost of spells but keeping costs low also means we can tempo play our cards a little better. I do think that this is another wrath that could be considered alongside Austere Command (which for very similar reasons I have not included). When it comes to a lot of our spot removal and sweepers we are playing them responsively as needed rather than proactively so we don't normally NEED them to be as cheap but it helps us to keep playing through to have things be cheap. I did include Mizzium Mortars lately because my issue is more towards lots of small blockers than a few big ones but I think when it comes to my removal and sweepers I still need to do a lot of testing to really see what it is that this deck needs. I will toss this one into the considerations too and with more games I hope to have a better understanding of what works and what doesn't when it comes to answers / sweepers.
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I totally get you on not netdecking. Its something I have never done myself but I do love having a good discussion on cards. The point of forums like these are to be able to discuss strategies, and card inclusions. I still have a LOT of testing of this new list and like you said what works for one person might not work for the next.
Possibility Storm - I think I have a lot of reasons I do want to try it out but for now I think I am going to try to put it off for a little bit until I can do more testing. It is an effect that I have a lot of reasons to toy with it and see what it can do but at the same time I need to restrain myself a little and get more testing in before I make more changes for the time being.
Anti Swarm Answers - yea, its something I have been trying to solve myself. Because we are also kind of swarm we really want one sided answers that wont completely hose us. Orzhov Pontiff and Zealous Persecution could possibly work but they are a little narrow in what they can do which is why I originally went for Mizzium Mortars. Orzhov Pontiff could be interesting with a repeat sac outlet though as you could -2/-2 opponents creatures with it. If you play against a lot of tribal decks you might consider Engineered Plague as well. The hard part is that its hard to come up with something that is like... Toxic Deluge for opponents stuff without it costing like a million mana. Really, I wish we had access to Cyclonic Rift lol.
Purpheros -
You could play ashnod's altar and try to jam some big mana through it for big x spells. My issue with that tactic though is that Ashnod's really doesn't fit this build all that well and if you are in a situation where you can sac a bunch of tokens for a ton of mana then you are probably in a good position anyways. Adding the big x mana spells to the deck in any sort of relevant number would make a lot hinge on this altar so I don't think it nicely fits the build as you really need to get a few very specific cards together that on their own don't really fit that well here. I prefer to build on a standpoint of trying to get cards that all interact well with the same basic principal and adding those would add cards that can work well but require a specific setup for it to be good. You might as well add Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion along that thinking because it could win the game.
My point is more that my goal is often cards that fit a build on their own and if you can go off big with them great. In this case Ashnods as well as any X mana spell really don't go well into this build because neither one on their own contribute all that significantly to what the deck wants to do.
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Mid-Tier:
Filthy Casual: WUBRG Jodah WUBRG WUBRG Fatties WUBRG
Possibility Storm: Wow, I love that card and it indeed seems like a cool addition to this kind of deck. I think I'll make room for it in my own deck before I play with it tomorrow and try to see how it goes
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Multiplayer commander decks
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If you play this as a swarm deck you really DONT want to add much mass creature removal unless its something like Hallowed Burial, martial coup, kindred dominance, decree of pain, extinction, In Garruk's Wake, plague wind, and MAYBE fumigate. Even then you may only want to play two or three depending. The above stuff is not all the most efficient but the most hurt your opponent more than you mostly. I mean in white and black you have upwards of 3 to 4 base wrath of god effects at 4cc minimum. That's not counting things like disenchant you may want to play or its variants or Vandalblast. Id play a few games in your meta to see what types of decks people play before totally setting you removal. Some folks use more artifacts some more enchantments.
Whooo lots of responses.
So, its a card I actually like in my current build but I think in general its kind of trashy. So, you really want to be moving really fast with a lot of cheap vamps for it to work. I use it kind of like another Mox style of effect that also comes with a vamp and no card disadvantage. Its ability to create tokens is the biggest hot garbage I have ever seen so I consider it more of a tempo ramp than a token maker in my case. I think it really gains more when you are moving quick with cheaper vamps than if you are running higher mana vamps. You really want to be able to flip it by like turn 3 if you have it in your opener.
I honestly think there are a lot more lists I would not run it in than ones I would but my list happened to get to the point that being a single token on theme plus a tempo ramp was good enough for one mana.
Fire covenant - I think I am going to bring it in for Retribution of the Meek and see how things go. I ordered a copy a while back and I have just been trying to put off more changes.
Possibility Storm - Yea I think it has a lot of promise. I think I am ready to make room for it to see how things go. Let me know if you get any testing with it.
Yea that's mostly how I play it. The token making option of it is really only something I would do if I run out of action and don't have anything to do just because the mana cost for what it does is way too high.
Purphy -
Fire Covenant - im going to make room for it right now. I agree that while Zealous Persecution might be good it seems kind of niche as to when its going to work.
Removal depends on the meta a lot. Its generally good to run cheap removal to interact but in a deck like this I primarily run removal to try to interact with cards that specifically shut me down. Propaganda effects, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Humility, Moats, Aether Flash, Night of Souls' Betrayal are some examples of cards that would really hurt to play against without an answer. Because I am running a bit light on the answers I try to run more generic removal effects and generally I try my best to not use them until someone plays something that is going to block me from my gameplan. This is an aggro deck so I often try to swarm and kill people before their value cards really matter. Depending on the deck and gameplan you run different amounts of removal. Because this list is generally removal light, I try to make that removal be versatile which is why I have opted for cards that often clear out multiple cards or can hit anything over something like say Swords to Plowshares.
Ramp - ramp is usually good but it really depends on what the goal of your deck is. Because my curve is so low here I run more of tempo style of ramp over traditional ramp like sigents. If and when you have a commander you plan to curve into play that costs say 4-5 mana is a good example of times you might want to consider signets as well as things like Mana Vault. If your gameplan tends to be one where you have a later game commander in the 6-7+ thats when you might consider a later game ramp like say Worn Powerstone / Thran Dynamo. In a lot of cases what ramp you run from artifacts depends a lot on what kind of deck you are playing. Because I am trying to move so fast with a low curve I opted to go with Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, Mana Crypt, Legion's Landing, and Gemstone Caverns which would be considered more of tempo style of ramp.
Mana Curve - playing with some big vamps is actually normal. I am kind of breaking the mold with my approach and seeing how viable it is to move on an excessively low curve. Edgar Markov gives the most value when moving more bodies quickly not to mention if you ever want to cast him you really want a swarm of bodies in play which also encourages a high turnover list that pushes creatures into play quickly. Some of the hardest thing to overcome with having a low curve and moving fast is finding your card draw consistently and keeping it.
I did consider some more expensive sweeper effects because Austere Command would be really sweet with this build but ultimately I am trying to keep the curve low. Its possible with more testing I might change some and allow for more cards in the 4+ mana range. I am kind of slowly making observations and making changes as they happen and really I would love some sort of artifact / enchantment sweeper option for this list. I have gone as far as to consider Purify but for the one mana difference I think Austere Command has a lot more power.
DECK CHANGES:
As some more info, I did see Impact Tremors last night and honestly, its seemed a little more questionable of late as I test the deck more. In my previous list I was building to syphon everyone's life off and I ran things like Opheomancer which really did make that a stronger play. I am contemplating moving it to possibly more removal such as Unexpectedly Absent or maybe even Aura of Silence.
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@pathfinder - Throne of the God-Pharaoh, have you tried this one out. I feel like this not only speeds up the clock, is low casting, but also helps protect against Sleep effects.
As I have moved the deck to move faster there is also the issue that I often want to play my one drop on one mana. Then I have to kind of give up my turn 2 for impact because I need to play it before other things. I like Purpheros more because he is harder to remove as well as hitting harder and also serving as an anthem if I want. Impact Tremors can still be good but I really need to curve it and then have it stick for a good bit (which it hasn't for me of late).
Cloudstone Curio - it was an attempt to generate continuous value. I still see some issues when I don't hit draw or if my draw doesn't work. I need to test more and get more info but I have had issues with some of my elements of card advantage thus far. Ad Nausium / Null Profusion can be a little harder to get to their mana because I run a few less lands and if I draw them early they can be awkward to work with. I have had a few opening hands with them and I don't really know what to do about them because they mostly sit in hand and I hope I can get the lands to work with them. Like I said though, I need to test more as it stands.
Landbase - I have a few that I had to adjust for what I had on hand but I want to circle back sometime soon and reassess on some of my lands. I noticed that some lands like Volrath's Stronghold have felt a little weaker in here because I find it very important to hit my colors and recovering a lot of my vamps has been less of a concern of mine.
Bloodchief Ascension - I don't think it would work that well to be honest. It is still really slow to go active and then it needs to live a long time. Cards going to my opponents graveyard will still happen some with fetches and possibly chump blocks but I think ultimately its going to take a long time to go active and I don't expect it to proc much. I don't believe you can get more than one counter per turn either so it just feels..... wayyyy slow. I also dont like to assume that I will get anything in my opening hand so this is a card that falls off really hard if you get it later too.
Throne of the God-Pharaoh - honestly, I have been having more and more issues with cards that are good when I am doing good. It does have the advantage that if I can turn my creatures sideways at all it will ensure a bunch of damage and it can be used after I get a bunch of creatures in play but I still have an issue with it that if I can turn a bunch of creatures sideways I am probably doing ok already so there is the question of it is a winmore play. It also pairs poorly with Reconnaissance which is too bad. I will give it a little more thought but there is the question of if I can already turn sideways with a bunch of dudes if this is winmore. If I cant afford to turn sideways with a bunch of dudes then this card does nothing for me.
Good to hear some game reports. I wish I had some meaningful reports to give in the last few weeks but between not being at games and the games I played being fast combo and then landscrew into humility wrath.... I guess I hope to give some better report this week.
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