Hello, welcome to Innis...I mean my deck list of B/R Vampires.
First off any advice would be welcomed and taken into consideration. I think there is room for improvement in this deck but, it is very fast and has multiple win conditions and combinations of cards that synergize well together.
The main purpose of this deck is to abuse the "Madness" mechanic by using the insane discard outlets that cards like
Stromkirk Condemned
and
Furyblade Vampire
give us. Therefore we usually want a
Falkenrath Gorger
in our opening hand, as to enable all of our vamps to have Madness. This helps us cast spells at instant speed as well as eliminate the downside of discarding cards to buff our team.
Bloodghast
helps situations where you don't have a madness card in hand and you still want to discard a card, time it right and you're casting a 2/1 with Landfall for free due to the fact that you can pull a combat trick with Condemned, mess up their attackers or blockers, and then play a land next turn bringing him into the battlefield (possibly with haste). Other synergies such as the Incorrigible Youths + Stromkirk Condemned
and Volderan Pariah + Bloodghast also exist.
This deck can win on turn four pretty reliably, sometimes even without Gorger, though it has it's weaknesses. It's very quick and keeps a clock on your opponent. Very rarely is mana a problem, although you wanna make sure you have at least two lands since the deck can function with two mana. One weakness is that it doesn't have the best counter cards in its sideboard, so it can have a rough time against burn and has problems with board wipe.
One of the special things about this deck, is that it can be transformed into a mid-range, Mono-Black, tribal deck. If you feel like it is necessary to play with more efficient cards and use the rallying that the vampire tribe has, you can choose to replace some red cards with some of the black cards in the sideboard. Of course you can sideboard
Thoughtseize
in like you normally would. However, I needed to make sure that
Vampire Nocturnus
would be able to use his passive ability as reliably as possible. Besides cards like
Gifted Aetherborn
and
Gatekeeper of Malakir
are great sideboard card alone. You can usually race other aggro decks with the splash of red and if you feel like the opponent will stall until later, you can use the black to get some very strong vamps to protect
Liliana of the Veil
which can be used to take advantage of the madness mechanic and make the opponent sac a creature.
Geier Reach Sanitarium
is a card that allows you to dig for cards while at the same time hopefully allowing you to take advantage of madness. Madness can be used to cast cards like
Captivating Vampire
so you can steal a creature from the enemy at very strange times.
Fiery Temper
and
Vampiric Fury
might not be appreciated by some but I've found them to be extremely useful in finishing games by getting in that last bit of damage or killing all of their blocking creatures without losing any on my side due to first strike. Alms helps burn the opponent down and buys time for yourself against decks like burn, it is also another madness outlet.
Here is a decent turn four lethal example that might help you understand how this deck works. Providing your opponent doesn't interfere too much. Keep in mind, this is merely one of the openings you can make. this deck is extremely flexible which lessens the effects of pithing needle and surgical extraction.
Turn One:
Blood Crypt
,
Falkenrath Gorger
.
Turn Two:
Swamp
,
Stromkirk Condemned
, discard
Bloodghast
, attack for 3.
Turn Three:
Bloodstained Mire
, Bloodghast landfalls, Madness out
Incorrigible Youths
, attack for 11.
Turn Four:
Cavern of Souls
, play
Voldaren Pariah
for Madness, and attack for 13. You then have the option of flipping Pariah after the combat step to make your opponent sacrifice three of their creatures then on the opponents turn you can cast fiery temper for 3 if they are still alive.
I can't tell you how useful
Voldaren Pariah
can be, if you use her correctly she can board wipe and then all of a sudden, you have a 6/5 flyer! The fact you can cast her for at instant speed on the opponent's turn is insane. However, don't forget about a certain vampire captain
Stromkirk Captain
this guy not only gives all other vampires +1/+1 but they also have first strike. Make sure you don't forget about that, you can throw him onto the battlefield like he has flash, using madness(from
Falkenrath Gorger
) to wreck the opposition. If you really want to get a thrill though, look no further than
Vampire Nocturnus
this vampire lord is the real deal. If you drop him down and just so happen to have a black card on top of your library, it's most likely GG. He is a game ending card for four mana and is actually pretty reliable if you decide to sideboard some red cards, when this is done the deck has a pretty high chance of having a black card on top of the library and if you happen to have a
Bloodstained Mire
on the board you can crack it so you get to shuffle your deck.
Thanks for taking the time to read this description, I know it doesn't look like the most reliable deck but I think it's fun to play, thematic, and playable all at the same time. This is my first Magic deck so again any advice would be appreciated.
