You must be. Check your filters. Goat's website says they have 6 per bot.
If not, then maybe diversify. You should be able to get them 6 for 21 or better. Try humans too.
Yeah all my filters were off and it just wasn't working... I shut down the beta client and opened up the normal one and they all had them again. Weird!
Can I drop from a draft after all of my matches are played? As in, will I still receive my product? If so, do I still have to wait until the draft's over to receive, or is it immediate?
Tested with and without. Zero main, zero side. I like it that way. I have more consistent Traps, better topdecks, and the only times I wish I had it I think of all the times I'm glad it wasn't wasting space in my hand.
When Terastodon comes into play and on ETB effect on the stack, if I target my own tectonic edge to blow up, can I respond and tap 1 open mana and sac the edge to destroy my opponent's land and still get a 3/3 beast token???
no, the ability will get countered due to an illegal target
Incorrect.
When Terastodon enters the battlefield, you may destroy up to three target noncreature permanents. For each permanent put into a graveyard this way, its controller puts a 3/3 green Elephant creature token onto the battlefield.
Please don't talk about rules if you don't know what you're talking about.
If you choose Tectonic Edge as one of your up to three targets then pop the Edge in response to the ETB trigger, you don't get the Beast token because it wasn't put into the graveyard via Terastodon's ability. In that respect you're better off choosing only two targets and just popping your Tectonic Edge separately as in your scenario nothing is happening by making it a target.
The problem with MGE is you rely on god hands, successful traps and have no backup plan. its fatty or bust. I played it for approx 7 months an dI am just tired of how bad it can be. Also im sick of decks with red taking over my stuff and killing me with it. this is why I switched to valakut. my Eldrazi and AIDs will be sad in my binder, but oh well.
I still don't understand this.
If your hand doesn't ramp, you're going to mulligan it. That seems pretty obvious. Otherwise, the deck can do plenty of stuff. I feel that my deck runs thin on win-cons and still has at least 16 cards that win me the game. Consistency is far from an issue with this deck... the bigger problem is usually the skill level of the pilot.
As for GSZ, I've tested it and don't like it much. It feels too clunky; sure you have a toolbox, but you're either cutting consistency or win conditions to play a card that serves no purpose 80% of the time other than to (unsuccessfully) replace itself. No thanks.
Anyone main-decking Thrun? Anyone tested Knowledge Pool yet? It seems strong in Eldrazi-heavy builds. Is Thopter Assembly complete trash? MBS rose some questions that I haven't been able to answer yet due to time constraints.
Alright, there's an EDH tournament for a Library of Alexandria at one of the local stores in my area. I really need help deciding what to play. I don't yet know if it's going to be 1v1 or multiplayer or points based, but I could really use that LoA. Any suggestions for generals? I want something fairly competitive yet fun to pilot.
Ever thought about Captain Sisay? The tutor engine can be really sick if you play the right cards. You have all of the 1-mana white removal and if you go ramp (like I do) you can get sick tutorable lockdowns like Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Rune-Tail, Jitte, Multani in multiplayer, Gaddock Teeg, Mindslaver can wreck an entire multiplayer game, Iona can sometimes just kill everyone else (1v1 with tutorable Iona is disgusting)... there's a lot of possibilities out there and they all own face. I'm undefeated in tournaments with Sisay.
I have known people that just go into Wal-Mart or Target and grab a bunch of packs of cards, open them and put the rares in their pockets and just walk out. I personally think that's not the way to get cards but that doesnt mean that people dont do it. They do! If you dont believe me, ask wal-mart or target on how much money they lose each year because of opened merchandise.
Magic: the Gathering cards as well as any other trading cards or trading card game carried by Wal-Mart (not sure about Target) are handled specifically by outside vendors. Many other items, like Hallmark cards and soda, are stocked this way as well. Wal-Mart does not purchase the merchandise until it is scanned at the register. This practice exonerates Wal-Mart of any shrink issues; any opened or stolen packages are given directly to the vendor and Wal-Mart will not lose a dime.
Think about this when you steal vendor items from Wal-Mart. If you're doing it because, "Wal-Mart is an obscenely rich company, they won't miss this," you actually aren't hurting them at all. You're hurting your own community who loses money from the shrink of their own assets. This will affect said community as the owners of these vendors have less money to redistribute to other citizens via shopping or services.
Also, stealing from Wal-Mart in general (including non-vendor items) will hurt your community's overall economy. Wal-Mart offers "profit sharing" to their associates, where every quarter a percentage of profit from that store is given back to their associates and therefore the community those associates live in. Those associates are going to turn around and spend that money in the community, helping it stay prosperous. Every dollar of shrink hurts their profit share and therefore the community.
If you're any kind of real person at all and actually care about your community you'll avoid stealing from Wal-Mart (or anywhere, really) as it's only going to hurt you in the long run. Of course most (not all) culprits aren't intelligent enough to understand the repercussions of their actions so it's probably hopeless, but at least I made an attempt to inform.
Not good in Standard? Are you kidding me? This is EXACTLY what Dredge-uh-Vine needed to be consistent again. Turn three, five or ten 1/1 flyers and/or a VV or two? Please and thank you.
Other than that, I don't see it being played much.
From the testing I've made so far against Valakut (GerryT's list), the percentages changes dramatically once you put the Demons in. I'm prolly one (the only?) advocate of maindecking demons, but I've played em as 2-off MD with the 3rd in SB and they've never disappointed me. One thing to notice, playing with Demons, is that you will be often putting your opponent in the "deal with this or die" situation: especially if you got Kalastria online when u sac critters for Demon, you put them on a 1 turn clock. Of course it's a trick you shouldn't pull so lightheartedly, but I've won a good amount of matches with ground clogged with the Demon.
I hate quoting myself.
Quote from "Alandariel (taken from M-L.com)" »
DoDG main is something I barely even needed to test. Against any kind of Ux Control piloted by an intelligent player he just never hits play. Having a completely dead card in some matchups is truly detrimental to this deck's strategy of consistency and card advantage. If they have two mana open, you hold him. If they don't, you still have to respect the Jace or Roil bounce. Condemn is bad for you as well. In fact, any deck that can remove him is going to have a stronger matchup against you if he's main-decked, and that is never good. It also means you can't really run Dark Tutelage either, which I'm liking more every time it hits play.
I don't care if Valakut is 75% of your meta. If it's not every single deck that everyone plays other than you, it's not worth main-decking because almost every other deck can (and will) deal with him in an easy way that will just cause you to scoop. On the other hand, it's so strong against Valakut that just having it in the sideboard as a three-of should win you almost every match against them singlehandedly.
But I didn't pick on you. Not sure why you felt the need to single me out here. Well, single... you know what I mean.
I merely made an epic wall-of-text post explaining my decklist, my card (and color) choices, and my overall strategy. Please quote where I ever said anything specifically about you, about what exactly you said, or even made any slight reference to you as a person, a player, or a deck builder. I'm 110% sure I never did. Now I will: You act like you're the first and only person to say B/R is a better decision by making the statement that I'm picking on you because of my theories on an extremely popular and drastic build decision.
So I open pretty much the most insane pool I think I've ever pulled. Unfortunately for me, I'm absolute garbage at sealed. I'd like some input from RisingPhoenix here...
This is what I built. I originally decided on three colors, URw to add BSA and Blinding Mage. I made a last minute decision to cut white as I felt it wasn't worth the splash without any way to fix my mana.
I won game one easily. He was playing some UBw jank deck with Barony Vampires, Reassembling Skeletons, a Blinding Mage, and some crap creatures backed up with a Doom Blade, Mana Leak, and Cancel. Game two ended quickly as he curved out 2-3-4-5 and I got stuck at three land until I drew a fourth the turn before I lost with Titan and Chandra in hand. He played a Mind Control on my Azure Drake the turn after I drew it. He had countered my only Pyroclasm and I never drew another. Game three everything was going fine. I 3-for-1'd him twice with Pyroclasm and had been getting in there with Scroll Thief keeping my hand full. Eventually he Doom Blades it but does nothing else as I drop my Chandra turn seven with counter backup to avoid Mana Leak. It resolves. Titan hits play turn eight and taps out his only source of white mana as I keep his board clear with Pyroclasms and Chandra's Outrage. Out of freaking nowhere I end up losing to a 1-2 punch of topdeck Mind Control on Frost Titan and topdeck his own BSA. I had brought in Fling as it was game 3 to deal with Mind Control, but never saw it. I had no idea what he splashed white for and didn't think for a second he had BSA. He did splash white with no fixers for it and a tapper, where I thought it wasn't worth it.
Where did I go wrong? My deck probably sucks a lot... like I said, I'm garbage at sealed.
This is the list that I'm running right now. It's very consistent. I'll explain some of my card choices here before I get trolled to death.
I chose mono-black rather than BR or Br for more than a few reasons. While I love to read other players' testing results and theories, I never make any decisions based on anything but my own personal testing. BR just didn't add enough for me to warrant even a splash let alone make it a full-on second color. Sure, Bolt is good for the obvious reasons, Mark of Mutiny can win games in the right matchups, and Arc Trail is a serious headache versus Elves, Goblins, and Kuldotha Red as well as the mirror. However, I'm not as fond of Bolt in a format defined by 6/6 beef and multitudes of 1/1s that simply turn sideways every turn and pray. Bolt is much better when it can just win you the game such as in Red Deck Wins or get significantly more value than just trading one-for-one with a Goblin token. Mark of Mutiny is great in many matchups, but too many times I had it in the grip game 1 versus Kuldotha Red where it was virtually useless or against Valakut where a good player will see red mana, acknowledge the threat of it being in your hand, and simply wait to drop Titan until they're ready to combo out. It's a great sideboard card in my opinion, but I can't justify adding a color for a card that helps in some matchups just as well as other cards in the color I'm already playing. Arc Trail is the only card that really pains me to drop. It's such a house in the mirror as well as versus Elves, Kuldotha Red, White Weenie (including Quest variants), any deck that runs Fauna Shaman and Lotus Cobra... the list truly goes on. It's rarely a dead card; even at sorcery speed this baby could possibly take the cake for best weenie removal in the set in a vacuum. However, this deck simply doesn't have enough problems with balls-to-the-wall aggro and mono-black has plenty of answers to the big guys without sacrificing stability. No matter how much you fight the thought adding a second color definitely does heighten inconsistency even if by a slight margin. I don't know about you, but I don't like to take chances when two mull-to-five hands in one match because you're color screwed means I have to get really lucky to win the whole tournament.
And please... don't tell me about "testing and results", that I should "read the whole thread", or even that "pros say that BR is strictly better." I have done a ton of my own testing with BR and have seen the results. I've also read every post in this thread, and if you think that professional magic players are the only people that play this game and have brains you're sadly mistaken. But I digress...
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My main-deck choices are mostly standard, with a few less-seen choices mixed in there. Bloodghast, Highborn, Gatekeeper, Lacerator, and Seer are all choices that shouldn't need explained. I opted to run four copies of Gatekeeper to up the main-deck removal total to eight. This helps deal with first game woes against mid-range aggro and ramp decks.
Bloodthrone Vampire is a house in mono-black Vampires. He can win games by himself if not played around, keeps your opponent on his heels when a Highborn is in play, and can even keep your opponents' mid-range creatures at bay just by not swinging... especially if they think you're holding back more Vamps. (You are holding back more Vamps, right?)
Hexmage is probably more of a meta choice than anything. Well, to be honest, I can't imagine a meta that isn't full of planeswalkers. This card stops Kuldotha Red's Chimeric Masses, the obvious planeswalkers, and even stops some aggro decks dead in their tracks. It's not a hugely common matchup, but you should have seen the look on my opponent's face when his Kiln Fiend aggro deck paled as it threw its burn at two Hexmages then rolled over to a one-two punch of Gatekeeper and Highborn. It looked very similar to this.
Feast of Blood. I've never had so many people rage about how bad my deck was because of one card before. Listen guys, if you don't have two Vampires in play you're in terrible shape anyway. Very few decks are going to deal with all of your creatures and then play something you need to Feast, and as long as you're not over-extending board sweepers shouldn't be an issue anyway. Between Bloodghast and holding creatures and lands back until you need them, casting Feast should never be an issue. In terms of card strength itself, this one is probably unmatched. The lifegain destroys red-based aggro-ish burn decks like Red Deck Wins and some Boros Bushwacker builds. It destroys any creature, any time, any where; for this reason alone it is virtually never a dead card. Titans, Baneslayers, Eldrazi (barring Emrakul), and it's even good in the mirror against DoDG, which is growing in popularity as a main-deck choice. There's a lot of reasons to play this card, and practically no reason not to.
Duress is another extremely underrated card in the current format. It wrecks so many decks out there it's ridiculous. Pyroclasm, Arc Trail, Day of Judgement, Consume the Meek, Summoning Trap, Genesis Wave, Rebirth, counterspells, any planeswalker; you'll be hard-pressed to find a deck that Duress won't cripple. I've tested it extensively main-deck as well as sideboard and have come to the conclusion that it's too good in game one against your weaker matchups to leave it in the board. I've literally never had it be a dead card; even when you don't hit anything with it, you at least know what to play around which is extremely valuable to any deck, but especially Vamps. In all honesty however, there's so few decks that Duress will consistently miss on that it's a non-issue.
Dark Tutelage is still a slightly marginal card for me. To be honest, I've never had it work against me. I've had a few sporadic games where it didn't do as much as I would like it to, but the card advantage provided in a deck that truly thrives on it is invaluable. I wish it was Bob, but it's not. Don't let anyone tell you it is. In control matchups, they will not be able to recover from a resolved Tutelage. If they counter it, it's probably still a fair deal for you. Against aggro decks they simply can't power past your multitude of bodies. It's probably not amazing in the Valakut matchup, but thats why they come out post-board. I'm still sold on it for now, but I'm going to keep an eye on how the meta evolves.
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Sideboard choices can and most definitely should vary to suit specific metagames. I mean, that's what it's for, right? However, my very general sideboard should deal with most of the biggest threats to the deck. I'll explain now why I chose each card.
The extra Vampire Hexmage is to complement the three main-deck copies. It comes in against planeswalker-heavy decks as well as aggro decks that run a significant amount of X/2s.
Demon of Death's Gate absolutely steamrolls quite a few decks in the current meta. If you resolve it against Valakut or Eldrazi green (especially on turn two) they will most likely look pretty heated. It should stay out against decks with good spot removal or counterspells. The last thing you want is to give your opponent a four-for-one and lose six life in a deck that has some element of suicide and relies on card advantage to win. Use with care, and whatever you do, keep him out of the main-deck. Oh, and Dark Tutelage doesn't like him very much either.
Marsh Casualties is our Arc Trail replacement. It's great against Elves and in the mirror. It's a game-breaker for the Kuldotha Red matchup. WW Quest will have a tough time winning when you wipe their board and then Gatekeeper their Armored creature. It's fantastic in quite a few matchups; you'll probably figure out which ones pretty quickly if you're playing this deck.
I felt the deck needed more spot removal in certain matchups so I decided I should try to find a card that might compare to Feast somehow. It took me a very long time to find anything even remotely close to how good it was, until I stumbled across Doom Blade.[/troll] Use it. Any non-black creature-based aggro deck is going to be unhappy to see you play this.
Memoricide is a card that many people think is too slow for Vamps, or doesn't contribute enough. I disagree. After a decent amount of testing, Memoricide has proven its worth against Valakut (name Titan), virtually every form of random jank combo (you would be surprised how much there is, and some is actually strong against us), Vengevine, Eldrazi, and even Jace... though I don't usually find myself bringing this in against control decks as our main-deck alone is quite strong against them even post-board.
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The following is a collection of cards that didn't make the cut:
Vampire Nighthawk is a little overkill against aggro. It's just more than we really need, and is more of a defensive card when we can usually just straight-up roll them.
Captivating Vampire is the opposite of what you want to be doing when you're playing this. It has "DoJ me!" written all over it in silver sharpie marker. (This gives me an idea for my next altered art...)
Bloodchief Ascension doesn't really help any of our matchups. Yeah, it's good against aggro. No, we don't really need it against them. I intend to test it a little more though, as it does have good synergy with the sacrifice package.
Smother? We have Feast, Gatekeeper, and Marsh Casualties. There's nothing that Smother can do that these cards can't.
Abyssal Persecutor is a tad too slow for us. Yeah, with Bloodthrone Vampire and Viscera Seer it shouldusually be able to do its job then disappear. I don't like either of those words though. I prefer consistency and card advantage, and Persecutor provides neither of these.
Vendetta is a card I haven't truly found a use for yet. I've heard plenty of praise about it, but I'm just not sold on its usefulness yet. We have Doom Blade already without the drawback, why is one mana so serious? If you're playing the deck correctly, it really shouldn't be.
Well, that's all I got for now. I'm too tired to post deck matchups at the moment. If anyone has any questions about my choices, my matchups, my sideboarding, or about anything I didn't list, feel free to PM me.
Yeah all my filters were off and it just wasn't working... I shut down the beta client and opened up the normal one and they all had them again. Weird!
yep >_<;;
Incorrect.
Please don't talk about rules if you don't know what you're talking about.
If you choose Tectonic Edge as one of your up to three targets then pop the Edge in response to the ETB trigger, you don't get the Beast token because it wasn't put into the graveyard via Terastodon's ability. In that respect you're better off choosing only two targets and just popping your Tectonic Edge separately as in your scenario nothing is happening by making it a target.
Hope this helped.
I still don't understand this.
If your hand doesn't ramp, you're going to mulligan it. That seems pretty obvious. Otherwise, the deck can do plenty of stuff. I feel that my deck runs thin on win-cons and still has at least 16 cards that win me the game. Consistency is far from an issue with this deck... the bigger problem is usually the skill level of the pilot.
As for GSZ, I've tested it and don't like it much. It feels too clunky; sure you have a toolbox, but you're either cutting consistency or win conditions to play a card that serves no purpose 80% of the time other than to (unsuccessfully) replace itself. No thanks.
Anyone main-decking Thrun? Anyone tested Knowledge Pool yet? It seems strong in Eldrazi-heavy builds. Is Thopter Assembly complete trash? MBS rose some questions that I haven't been able to answer yet due to time constraints.
Ever thought about Captain Sisay? The tutor engine can be really sick if you play the right cards. You have all of the 1-mana white removal and if you go ramp (like I do) you can get sick tutorable lockdowns like Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Rune-Tail, Jitte, Multani in multiplayer, Gaddock Teeg, Mindslaver can wreck an entire multiplayer game, Iona can sometimes just kill everyone else (1v1 with tutorable Iona is disgusting)... there's a lot of possibilities out there and they all own face. I'm undefeated in tournaments with Sisay.
Magic: the Gathering cards as well as any other trading cards or trading card game carried by Wal-Mart (not sure about Target) are handled specifically by outside vendors. Many other items, like Hallmark cards and soda, are stocked this way as well. Wal-Mart does not purchase the merchandise until it is scanned at the register. This practice exonerates Wal-Mart of any shrink issues; any opened or stolen packages are given directly to the vendor and Wal-Mart will not lose a dime.
Think about this when you steal vendor items from Wal-Mart. If you're doing it because, "Wal-Mart is an obscenely rich company, they won't miss this," you actually aren't hurting them at all. You're hurting your own community who loses money from the shrink of their own assets. This will affect said community as the owners of these vendors have less money to redistribute to other citizens via shopping or services.
Also, stealing from Wal-Mart in general (including non-vendor items) will hurt your community's overall economy. Wal-Mart offers "profit sharing" to their associates, where every quarter a percentage of profit from that store is given back to their associates and therefore the community those associates live in. Those associates are going to turn around and spend that money in the community, helping it stay prosperous. Every dollar of shrink hurts their profit share and therefore the community.
If you're any kind of real person at all and actually care about your community you'll avoid stealing from Wal-Mart (or anywhere, really) as it's only going to hurt you in the long run. Of course most (not all) culprits aren't intelligent enough to understand the repercussions of their actions so it's probably hopeless, but at least I made an attempt to inform.
On a related note, this guy's an idiot.
You don't cast him... you mill him with Hedron Crab or discard him to Fauna Shaman. Don't you know how Dredge-uh-Vine works?
Other than that, I don't see it being played much.
I hate quoting myself.
I don't care if Valakut is 75% of your meta. If it's not every single deck that everyone plays other than you, it's not worth main-decking because almost every other deck can (and will) deal with him in an easy way that will just cause you to scoop. On the other hand, it's so strong against Valakut that just having it in the sideboard as a three-of should win you almost every match against them singlehandedly.
Who am I kidding? I !@#$ love quoting myself.
EDIT: WTF..............
But I didn't pick on you. Not sure why you felt the need to single me out here. Well, single... you know what I mean.
I merely made an epic wall-of-text post explaining my decklist, my card (and color) choices, and my overall strategy. Please quote where I ever said anything specifically about you, about what exactly you said, or even made any slight reference to you as a person, a player, or a deck builder. I'm 110% sure I never did. Now I will: You act like you're the first and only person to say B/R is a better decision by making the statement that I'm picking on you because of my theories on an extremely popular and drastic build decision.
1 Tireless Missionaries
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Roc Egg
1 Palace Guard
1 Blinding Mage
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Pacifism
1 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Holy Strength
2 Armored Ascension
Blue
1 Azure Drake
1 AEther Adept
2 Merfolk Spy
1 Frost Titan
1 Maritime Guard
1 Scroll Thief
1 Phantom Beast
1 Harbor Serpent
2 Cancel
1 Diminish
1 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Mana Leak
1 Negate
1 Preordain
2 Sleep
1 Jace's Erasure
1 Viscera Seer
1 Rotting Legion
1 Phylactery Lich
1 Nether Horror
1 Gravedigger
1 Black Knight
1 Barony Vampire
2 Stabbing Pain
1 Mind Rot
3 Duress
1 Deathmark
1 Blood Tithe
Red
2 Vulshok Berserker
1 Manic Vandal
1 Fire Servant
1 Canyon Minotaur
2 Berserker's of Blood Ridge
1 Arc Runner
1 Prodigal Pyromancer
1 Chandra Nalaar
1 Thunder Strike
2 Chandra's Outrage
3 Pyroclasm
1 Fling
1 Volcanic Strength
1 Demolish
2 Spined Wurm
2 Wall of Vines
1 Sacred Wolf
3 Runeclaw Bear
1 Prized Unicorn
1 Garruk's Companion
1 Acidic Slime
1 Overwhelming Stampede
1 Cultivate
Artifact
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
2 Voltaic Key
This is what I built. I originally decided on three colors, URw to add BSA and Blinding Mage. I made a last minute decision to cut white as I felt it wasn't worth the splash without any way to fix my mana.
8 Mountain
10 Island
Creatures
1 Azure Drake
2 AEther Adept
1 Frost Titan
1 Maritime Guard
1 Prodigal Pyromancer
1 Scroll Thief
1 Chandra Nalaar
2 Cancel
2 Chandra's Outrage
1 Diminish
1 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Mana Leak
1 Negate
1 Preordain
3 Pyroclasm
2 Sleep
I won game one easily. He was playing some UBw jank deck with Barony Vampires, Reassembling Skeletons, a Blinding Mage, and some crap creatures backed up with a Doom Blade, Mana Leak, and Cancel. Game two ended quickly as he curved out 2-3-4-5 and I got stuck at three land until I drew a fourth the turn before I lost with Titan and Chandra in hand. He played a Mind Control on my Azure Drake the turn after I drew it. He had countered my only Pyroclasm and I never drew another. Game three everything was going fine. I 3-for-1'd him twice with Pyroclasm and had been getting in there with Scroll Thief keeping my hand full. Eventually he Doom Blades it but does nothing else as I drop my Chandra turn seven with counter backup to avoid Mana Leak. It resolves. Titan hits play turn eight and taps out his only source of white mana as I keep his board clear with Pyroclasms and Chandra's Outrage. Out of freaking nowhere I end up losing to a 1-2 punch of topdeck Mind Control on Frost Titan and topdeck his own BSA. I had brought in Fling as it was game 3 to deal with Mind Control, but never saw it. I had no idea what he splashed white for and didn't think for a second he had BSA. He did splash white with no fixers for it and a tapper, where I thought it wasn't worth it.
Where did I go wrong? My deck probably sucks a lot... like I said, I'm garbage at sealed.
22 Swamp
Creatures
4 Bloodthrone Vampire
4 Bloodghast
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Kalastria Highborn
4 Vampire Lacerator
4 Viscera Seer
3 Vampire Hexmage
4 Feast of Blood
4 Duress
3 Dark Tutelage
1 Vampire Hexmage
3 Demon of Death's Gate
4 Marsh Casualties
3 Doom Blade
4 Memoricide
This is the list that I'm running right now. It's very consistent. I'll explain some of my card choices here before I get trolled to death.
I chose mono-black rather than BR or Br for more than a few reasons. While I love to read other players' testing results and theories, I never make any decisions based on anything but my own personal testing. BR just didn't add enough for me to warrant even a splash let alone make it a full-on second color. Sure, Bolt is good for the obvious reasons, Mark of Mutiny can win games in the right matchups, and Arc Trail is a serious headache versus Elves, Goblins, and Kuldotha Red as well as the mirror. However, I'm not as fond of Bolt in a format defined by 6/6 beef and multitudes of 1/1s that simply turn sideways every turn and pray. Bolt is much better when it can just win you the game such as in Red Deck Wins or get significantly more value than just trading one-for-one with a Goblin token. Mark of Mutiny is great in many matchups, but too many times I had it in the grip game 1 versus Kuldotha Red where it was virtually useless or against Valakut where a good player will see red mana, acknowledge the threat of it being in your hand, and simply wait to drop Titan until they're ready to combo out. It's a great sideboard card in my opinion, but I can't justify adding a color for a card that helps in some matchups just as well as other cards in the color I'm already playing. Arc Trail is the only card that really pains me to drop. It's such a house in the mirror as well as versus Elves, Kuldotha Red, White Weenie (including Quest variants), any deck that runs Fauna Shaman and Lotus Cobra... the list truly goes on. It's rarely a dead card; even at sorcery speed this baby could possibly take the cake for best weenie removal in the set in a vacuum. However, this deck simply doesn't have enough problems with balls-to-the-wall aggro and mono-black has plenty of answers to the big guys without sacrificing stability. No matter how much you fight the thought adding a second color definitely does heighten inconsistency even if by a slight margin. I don't know about you, but I don't like to take chances when two mull-to-five hands in one match because you're color screwed means I have to get really lucky to win the whole tournament.
And please... don't tell me about "testing and results", that I should "read the whole thread", or even that "pros say that BR is strictly better." I have done a ton of my own testing with BR and have seen the results. I've also read every post in this thread, and if you think that professional magic players are the only people that play this game and have brains you're sadly mistaken. But I digress...
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My main-deck choices are mostly standard, with a few less-seen choices mixed in there. Bloodghast, Highborn, Gatekeeper, Lacerator, and Seer are all choices that shouldn't need explained. I opted to run four copies of Gatekeeper to up the main-deck removal total to eight. This helps deal with first game woes against mid-range aggro and ramp decks.
Bloodthrone Vampire is a house in mono-black Vampires. He can win games by himself if not played around, keeps your opponent on his heels when a Highborn is in play, and can even keep your opponents' mid-range creatures at bay just by not swinging... especially if they think you're holding back more Vamps. (You are holding back more Vamps, right?)
Hexmage is probably more of a meta choice than anything. Well, to be honest, I can't imagine a meta that isn't full of planeswalkers. This card stops Kuldotha Red's Chimeric Masses, the obvious planeswalkers, and even stops some aggro decks dead in their tracks. It's not a hugely common matchup, but you should have seen the look on my opponent's face when his Kiln Fiend aggro deck paled as it threw its burn at two Hexmages then rolled over to a one-two punch of Gatekeeper and Highborn. It looked very similar to this.
Feast of Blood. I've never had so many people rage about how bad my deck was because of one card before. Listen guys, if you don't have two Vampires in play you're in terrible shape anyway. Very few decks are going to deal with all of your creatures and then play something you need to Feast, and as long as you're not over-extending board sweepers shouldn't be an issue anyway. Between Bloodghast and holding creatures and lands back until you need them, casting Feast should never be an issue. In terms of card strength itself, this one is probably unmatched. The lifegain destroys red-based aggro-ish burn decks like Red Deck Wins and some Boros Bushwacker builds. It destroys any creature, any time, any where; for this reason alone it is virtually never a dead card. Titans, Baneslayers, Eldrazi (barring Emrakul), and it's even good in the mirror against DoDG, which is growing in popularity as a main-deck choice. There's a lot of reasons to play this card, and practically no reason not to.
Duress is another extremely underrated card in the current format. It wrecks so many decks out there it's ridiculous. Pyroclasm, Arc Trail, Day of Judgement, Consume the Meek, Summoning Trap, Genesis Wave, Rebirth, counterspells, any planeswalker; you'll be hard-pressed to find a deck that Duress won't cripple. I've tested it extensively main-deck as well as sideboard and have come to the conclusion that it's too good in game one against your weaker matchups to leave it in the board. I've literally never had it be a dead card; even when you don't hit anything with it, you at least know what to play around which is extremely valuable to any deck, but especially Vamps. In all honesty however, there's so few decks that Duress will consistently miss on that it's a non-issue.
Dark Tutelage is still a slightly marginal card for me. To be honest, I've never had it work against me. I've had a few sporadic games where it didn't do as much as I would like it to, but the card advantage provided in a deck that truly thrives on it is invaluable. I wish it was Bob, but it's not. Don't let anyone tell you it is. In control matchups, they will not be able to recover from a resolved Tutelage. If they counter it, it's probably still a fair deal for you. Against aggro decks they simply can't power past your multitude of bodies. It's probably not amazing in the Valakut matchup, but thats why they come out post-board. I'm still sold on it for now, but I'm going to keep an eye on how the meta evolves.
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Sideboard choices can and most definitely should vary to suit specific metagames. I mean, that's what it's for, right? However, my very general sideboard should deal with most of the biggest threats to the deck. I'll explain now why I chose each card.
The extra Vampire Hexmage is to complement the three main-deck copies. It comes in against planeswalker-heavy decks as well as aggro decks that run a significant amount of X/2s.
Demon of Death's Gate absolutely steamrolls quite a few decks in the current meta. If you resolve it against Valakut or Eldrazi green (especially on turn two) they will most likely look pretty heated. It should stay out against decks with good spot removal or counterspells. The last thing you want is to give your opponent a four-for-one and lose six life in a deck that has some element of suicide and relies on card advantage to win. Use with care, and whatever you do, keep him out of the main-deck. Oh, and Dark Tutelage doesn't like him very much either.
Marsh Casualties is our Arc Trail replacement. It's great against Elves and in the mirror. It's a game-breaker for the Kuldotha Red matchup. WW Quest will have a tough time winning when you wipe their board and then Gatekeeper their Armored creature. It's fantastic in quite a few matchups; you'll probably figure out which ones pretty quickly if you're playing this deck.
I felt the deck needed more spot removal in certain matchups so I decided I should try to find a card that might compare to Feast somehow. It took me a very long time to find anything even remotely close to how good it was, until I stumbled across Doom Blade.[/troll] Use it. Any non-black creature-based aggro deck is going to be unhappy to see you play this.
Memoricide is a card that many people think is too slow for Vamps, or doesn't contribute enough. I disagree. After a decent amount of testing, Memoricide has proven its worth against Valakut (name Titan), virtually every form of random jank combo (you would be surprised how much there is, and some is actually strong against us), Vengevine, Eldrazi, and even Jace... though I don't usually find myself bringing this in against control decks as our main-deck alone is quite strong against them even post-board.
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The following is a collection of cards that didn't make the cut:
Vampire Nighthawk is a little overkill against aggro. It's just more than we really need, and is more of a defensive card when we can usually just straight-up roll them.
Captivating Vampire is the opposite of what you want to be doing when you're playing this. It has "DoJ me!" written all over it in silver sharpie marker. (This gives me an idea for my next altered art...)
Bloodchief Ascension doesn't really help any of our matchups. Yeah, it's good against aggro. No, we don't really need it against them. I intend to test it a little more though, as it does have good synergy with the sacrifice package.
Smother? We have Feast, Gatekeeper, and Marsh Casualties. There's nothing that Smother can do that these cards can't.
Abyssal Persecutor is a tad too slow for us. Yeah, with Bloodthrone Vampire and Viscera Seer it should usually be able to do its job then disappear. I don't like either of those words though. I prefer consistency and card advantage, and Persecutor provides neither of these.
Vendetta is a card I haven't truly found a use for yet. I've heard plenty of praise about it, but I'm just not sold on its usefulness yet. We have Doom Blade already without the drawback, why is one mana so serious? If you're playing the deck correctly, it really shouldn't be.
Well, that's all I got for now. I'm too tired to post deck matchups at the moment. If anyone has any questions about my choices, my matchups, my sideboarding, or about anything I didn't list, feel free to PM me.