First of All, UtF is NOT "pretty much standard" in Vamps. Look to the recent SCG5K for proof.
I've been behind Disfigure since the beginning. It's mainly to deal with Noble Hierarch+Birds of Paradise+Llanowar Elves, and sometimes it's a neat combat trick to swing the game in your favor. (It actually makes Baneslayer Angel blockable by a pumped Nighthawk or Nocturnus.)
Urge to Feed is awesome and all, but I still don't see a reason to run it over Smother. Sure, it can hit Baneslayer Angel while Smother can't, but smother deals with everything else.
Sorin didnt make the cut for almost all players since it has no direct synergy with the deck. Same goes with Vess. She's too clunky for the deck and has no immediate impact on MD.
I concur. Lili can't protect herself, and her abilities are really subpar.
Need Discard? look no further than Mind Sludge.
Need Tutor? What would you tutor up for anyway?
Ultimate? If the game goes on for that long, you should either be winning or losing without the help of Liliana.
Urge to FeedBB
Instant - Uncommon
Target creature gets -3/-3 until end of turn. You may tap any number of untapped Vampire creatures you control. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on each of those Vampires.
I have mainly two questions:
1) Does Urge to Feed, henceforth known as UtF, belong in the deck? I often find it suboptimal and wishing that I had run Smother or even Doom Blade over it. This is because I never have untapped vampires to take advantage of the second effect, so UtF is simply a very bad Nameless Inversion.
2) Provided that it has a place in the vamps deck IN THIS CURRENT META, How many do you think an average vampires player should run?
UtF is powerful. I'm sure I'll be sleeving them up when Alara rotates out. But as of now, IMHO, it is not very good. Thoughts?
I still need a few; in the meantime, I'm sticking with Hexmages.
But when I get my hands on a few, I definitely want to try 'em out.
When I play, I usually don't have extra mana until turn 6 or so.
Turn 1 nothing
Turn 2 Something (usually hexmage)
Turn 3 Something (gatekeeper or nighthawk)
Turn 4 Something (Nocturnus or Tendrils or two 2 drops)
Turn 5 Mind Sludge
I got no extra mana...
I was all excited when Highborn was spoiled. Now, not so much - Highborn fails to perform up to my standards, as I am often out of mana and the only purpose the really bad Grizzly Bear serves is to draw away Lightning Bolts from hitting Nighthawk and Nocturnus.
I honestly think that Hexmage is strictly better in most situations. At least IT has first strike can deal with planeswalkers.
I'm falling in love with this deck more and more as I playtest it. The 4x Maelstrom Pulse works so well, it even keeps Vampire Nocturnus turned on and pumping the rest of the team.
One of the weaknesses of this deck is against white exiling enchangments like Journey to Nowhere and Oblivion Ring. I find them annoying to play against, and Maelstrom Pulse just pulses all of them away, not to mention Baneslayer Angels, Equipments, and other nasty things.
The only trouble I see is getting a hand with Forest, Swamp and no other land. This deck really can't afford to stumble on mana, though with fetchlands and only 4 Forests, I don't see too much of a problem.
It looks fine. Can you add my username above Baneslayer Angel in the left upper corner and the text "The Cost of Standard" in the bottom in a nice font?
It should feature Baneslayer Angel, whose slaying down some $50 bills, leaving slashed bills in her wake on the left, and Jace, the Mindsculptor, with bills falling from the sky and disappearing with a POOF! when they reach the arcane magic between Jace's hands.
The text should be in speech bubbles, if possible, from Baneslayer Angel. "I Smite Wallets" and from Jace, "(Z->)90° - (E-N²W)90°t=1" from the flavor text of Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind.
Hopefully this isn't too hard for you, you can ignore it or bump it if it is.
Awesome.
Play it turn 2, do nothing. (-1 CA for you)
Spend 2 mana on turn 3, tap it, do nothing (0 CA)
Spend 2 mana on turn 4, tap it, they discard a card (+1 CA)
I don't know. 6 mana over three turns for 1 card seems a little too much for me. I'd rather play Duress or Mire's Toll or Mind Sludge for the same effect.
1- You dont know how to play it. I mean that you need to learn to play in favor of your cards it has sinergy with all the deck and also let you save your vampires or even make them BIGGER THREATS (NIGHTHAWK OUT OF BOLT RANGE!!!)
Yes, a unboltable Nighthawk is certainly a benefit, but consider this: how many turns will you have an untapped Nighthawk? If it's blocking, you probably were forced to play more blockers/attackers with your mana on your turn, thereby you don't have BB to play UtF. Secondly, I'd rather they bolt Nighthawk than they bolt Nocturnus. Just sayin'//
With all this said i think that (for me at least) the jund match up has become 50/50 since WWK released if you really know how to used the new cards Kalastria Highborn ( AWESOME CARD THAT HAD WON ME A LOT OF MATCH UP INCLUDING A LOT OF JUND MATCH UPS) and Urge to Feed.
Right. Let's play a bad Grizzly Bear for the first two or three turns, and hope that it isn't dead when we actually have mana to Syphon Life opponents, shall we?
Turn 1 Land, T2 Highborn, T3 Nighthawk, T4 Nocturnus, T5 Mind Sludge. By the time you have mana, it's already T6. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have Hexmage. At least it can deal with Planeswalkers.
By the way i have tested a Split on the Sideboard between Mire's Troll and Duress and it works really good against Jund and also this two cards has sinergy btween them turn 1 Duress....... turn 4 Mire's Troll and Nighthawk.
Yeh. Having played Jund, I find that as a Jund player, I really don't care about Duress. Yeah, it can be awkward taking away Maelstrom pulse or Terminate or such, but you can't Bloodbraid Elf and I have enough cascading card advantage that I really couldn't care less about the 1-for-1 Duress presents for you. Against Control, Duress is AWESOME. Against Jund, not so much.
I would expect Vamps to top Chapin Control any day, after all, Vamps is a very efficent aggro deck that spells doom for control with a resolved Mind Sludge.
Mind Sludge is AMAZING. It ices in an advantage that you likely have against decks - normally on turn 5, you have some cards, they have some cards, you discard their hand, and they're left in topdeck mode. Never mind what it does to control, Mind Sludge is awesome even against jund.
...though I doubt I'd board in extras for the Jund matchup. Jund inheriently runs out of cards. That's what their deck is designed to do - play out their hand, and hopefully crush you by the time the game degenerates into topdeck mode. I'd side out all but 1 sludge for things like Deathmark (kills everything except Nighthawk for one mana) or Pithing needle for the manlands.
I've been behind Disfigure since the beginning. It's mainly to deal with Noble Hierarch+Birds of Paradise+Llanowar Elves, and sometimes it's a neat combat trick to swing the game in your favor. (It actually makes Baneslayer Angel blockable by a pumped Nighthawk or Nocturnus.)
Urge to Feed is awesome and all, but I still don't see a reason to run it over Smother. Sure, it can hit Baneslayer Angel while Smother can't, but smother deals with everything else.
Too true. Doesn't do enough to marit a slot in the deck.
I concur. Lili can't protect herself, and her abilities are really subpar.
Need Discard? look no further than Mind Sludge.
Need Tutor? What would you tutor up for anyway?
Ultimate? If the game goes on for that long, you should either be winning or losing without the help of Liliana.
Instant - Uncommon
Target creature gets -3/-3 until end of turn. You may tap any number of untapped Vampire creatures you control. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on each of those Vampires.
I have mainly two questions:
1) Does Urge to Feed, henceforth known as UtF, belong in the deck? I often find it suboptimal and wishing that I had run Smother or even Doom Blade over it. This is because I never have untapped vampires to take advantage of the second effect, so UtF is simply a very bad Nameless Inversion.
2) Provided that it has a place in the vamps deck IN THIS CURRENT META, How many do you think an average vampires player should run?
UtF is powerful. I'm sure I'll be sleeving them up when Alara rotates out. But as of now, IMHO, it is not very good. Thoughts?
I was all excited when Highborn was spoiled. Now, not so much - Highborn fails to perform up to my standards, as I am often out of mana and the only purpose the really bad Grizzly Bear serves is to draw away Lightning Bolts from hitting Nighthawk and Nocturnus.
I honestly think that Hexmage is strictly better in most situations. At least IT has first strike can deal with planeswalkers.
One of the weaknesses of this deck is against white exiling enchangments like Journey to Nowhere and Oblivion Ring. I find them annoying to play against, and Maelstrom Pulse just pulses all of them away, not to mention Baneslayer Angels, Equipments, and other nasty things.
The only trouble I see is getting a hand with Forest, Swamp and no other land. This deck really can't afford to stumble on mana, though with fetchlands and only 4 Forests, I don't see too much of a problem.
It looks fine. Can you add my username above Baneslayer Angel in the left upper corner and the text "The Cost of Standard" in the bottom in a nice font?
Thank you
Blightning is a sorcery. IMHO, Mind Sludge is still better.
I suppose that's what Vampire Hexmage is for
I don't think so. Winning against a resolved Mind sludge is still hard.
It should feature Baneslayer Angel, whose slaying down some $50 bills, leaving slashed bills in her wake on the left, and Jace, the Mindsculptor, with bills falling from the sky and disappearing with a POOF! when they reach the arcane magic between Jace's hands.
The text should be in speech bubbles, if possible, from Baneslayer Angel. "I Smite Wallets" and from Jace, "(Z->)90° - (E-N²W)90°t=1" from the flavor text of Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind.
Hopefully this isn't too hard for you, you can ignore it or bump it if it is.
Thanks in advance!
Awesome.
Play it turn 2, do nothing. (-1 CA for you)
Spend 2 mana on turn 3, tap it, do nothing (0 CA)
Spend 2 mana on turn 4, tap it, they discard a card (+1 CA)
I don't know. 6 mana over three turns for 1 card seems a little too much for me. I'd rather play Duress or Mire's Toll or Mind Sludge for the same effect.
I never said Urge to Feed was a bad card. It's just not the optimal card for this deck.
Yes, a unboltable Nighthawk is certainly a benefit, but consider this: how many turns will you have an untapped Nighthawk? If it's blocking, you probably were forced to play more blockers/attackers with your mana on your turn, thereby you don't have BB to play UtF. Secondly, I'd rather they bolt Nighthawk than they bolt Nocturnus. Just sayin'//
Actually, I've been playing Vamps obsessively on both MWS and MTGO, and I still think Urge to Feed isn't optimal for this deck.
Right. Let's play a bad Grizzly Bear for the first two or three turns, and hope that it isn't dead when we actually have mana to Syphon Life opponents, shall we?
Turn 1 Land, T2 Highborn, T3 Nighthawk, T4 Nocturnus, T5 Mind Sludge. By the time you have mana, it's already T6. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have Hexmage. At least it can deal with Planeswalkers.
Yeh. Having played Jund, I find that as a Jund player, I really don't care about Duress. Yeah, it can be awkward taking away Maelstrom pulse or Terminate or such, but you can't Bloodbraid Elf and I have enough cascading card advantage that I really couldn't care less about the 1-for-1 Duress presents for you. Against Control, Duress is AWESOME. Against Jund, not so much.
They actually realize that Urge to Feed doesn't work as well as most people think it will
...though I doubt I'd board in extras for the Jund matchup. Jund inheriently runs out of cards. That's what their deck is designed to do - play out their hand, and hopefully crush you by the time the game degenerates into topdeck mode. I'd side out all but 1 sludge for things like Deathmark (kills everything except Nighthawk for one mana) or Pithing needle for the manlands.