A control oriented vampire deck from Shadows over Innistrad. Wait, wat?
Yeppers, that's what we are doing here today with this block deck, completely shifting the gears on the traditionally hyper aggro Shadows vamps and working them into a form of control deck. By using cards like Stromkirk Condemned and Call the Bloodline as discard outlets we gain access to removal and token generation like Murderous Compulsion and Gisa's Bidding which we use reactively on their turns, ultimately dropping either a Voldaren Pariah
or Westvale Abbey
when the time is right and wiping them them with dangerous evasive threats. That said, let's look at what we are running and why:
Land
The loadout here is fairly standard, as we are a mono colored deck and the Abbey is our secondary win con, but the Temples may require a bit of explanation -- depending on our draws, we can ditch them to discard outlets for an upside and return them to the battlefield for psuedo ramp if have the extra mana.
Primary Cards
These are the three cards our deck is primarily built around and provide a good insight into exactly what we want to be doing:
4x Call the Bloodline
The most important card in our deck, Bloodline allows us to cast our Madness spells at instant speed for 1 extra mana and provides extra board presence when doing so; it also allows us to turn excess land draws into tokens for our wincons or blocking.
4x Voldaren Pariah
Our primary win condition, the Pariah turns our trashy 1/1 vampire tokens into instant speed kill spells, transforming into a very troublesome 6/5 flying beater in the process, which relatively few decks should be able to reliably handle.
4x Murderous Compulsion
Our primary removal option, we can cast this at instant speed via a discard outlet to destroy any tapped creature for 2 mana -- not bad at all. This is most potent in conjunction with Bloodline, as the token created can also block the creature even if compulsion is countered.
Supporting Spells
2x Murder
Generally inferior to Compulsion as it doesn't generate a token or work as discard fodder for us, but it very notably DOES hit non-attacking targets, which we sometimes will need. Besides, another 2 chances at a kill spell isn't anything to really scoff at.
3x Alms of the Vein // 3x Biting Rain
Pick whichever is most needed; Alms is the preferred option against most decks, as it provides the most offensive tempo and cheapest token generation, whilst Rain works best against wide or indestructible decks our primary removal options are non-ideal against, though it will almost always empty our board as well, which has to be kept in mind.
3x From Under the Floorboards // 3x Gisa's Bidding
Similar to the above, pick whichever option best suits the situation: Floorboards is a fantastic mana sink and can single handedly fuel an Abbey or Pariah flip, or even win the game via a wide swing, whilst Bidding gives us reliable pseudo removal when we flash in two untapped zombies for a block. Bidding is the more aggressive pick, Floorboards is the control pick.
2x Succumb to Temptation
Sadly, this is the only real instant speed draw option available to us in the block, and it lacks madness, but sometimes this exactly what we need to spend a turn doing. Testing has shown more than two copies less than ideal though, because we are losing health and a turn casting this early game.
Supporting Creatures
3x Asylum Visitor
One step away from being a core card in the deck (Arterial Flow, why you come three blocks later. ; -;), Visitor is surprisingly versatile. If we flash it via Bloodline or a Condemned we can choose to block for up to 4 damage, which removes most creatures that thought they had a free shot at us, or we can allow it to draw us cards in certain matchups once we stabilize and they run out of gas.
4x Stromkirk Condemned
One of our secondary discard outlets, this will pump all of our non zombie creatures and provides a free discard whenever we want.
4x Heir of Falkenrath
Both our tertiary discard outlet and wincon, the Heir is a reliable flying beater that can fire off one of our discard spells for us before swinging in.
3x Twins of Maurer Estate
Terrible for its normal cost, excellent for its madness cost, this is another great flash blocker, and one of the few cards in the deck that can survive a Biting Rain without a Condemned boost.
The General Strategy
The single most important thing in this deck is start with a discard outlet, preferably Call the Bloodline or a Stromkirk Condemned, as discard enables basically everything we want to do in the deck. After that we want to play almost entirely reactively, as everything we want to do other than playing a land can be done on our opponent's turn, and usually to our advantage. If they swing, try to flash in a blocker and kill it advantageously, or kill it with a kill spell; if they play something non aggressive, build up tokens for one of the win cons. The deck is surprisingly resilient with the lifegain from vampire tokens, Alms of the Vein, and From Under the Floorboards too, so don't sweat taking a hit or two if solid trade options aren't available and keep your tokens instead, especially if you have to option to play a Pariah on the next turn, as that either wipes or severely damages most boards and nothing really protects against its flip trigger (other than killing it).
Whiiiich brings us to the second point -- keep an eye on what removal options your opponents have as well. Our two primary wincons are strong, but they both rely on transformation triggers, which means we pay to put the transformation on the stack and our opponent can respond before it resolves. There IS an option to deal with this in the block, namely Collective Brutality, but due to its cost it isn't in the main decklist and you have to kind of play around what they are doing instead. Basically, try to flip in response to something they are doing or when they tap out, unless you are fairly certain they can't respond to the trigger.
Specific Strategies
-
Call the Bloodline
Since this makes a token, whatever spell you cast effectively reads (card effect + gain 1 life and block target creature). This really helps other blockers trade with stronger cards and keeps you alive.
Casting Biting Rain with Bloodline will leave you with a token, since Rain goes on the stack above Bloodline.
Casting any creature spell with give you two creatures to sacrifice, and casting any token creating spell will give you that many tokens + 1 to sac.
-
Voldaren Pariah
Discarding the Pariah to Bloodline when you already have two creatures will allow you to immediately transform the Pariah.
Activate the Pariah's transformation trigger before firing off Biting Rain, as this will cause Rain to wipe the opponent's weak creatures before they can pick them as sacrifice targets.
Sacrifice gets around protection, hexproof, regeneration, and indestructible -- if they have it, you can kill it, provided you can get the rest of their board small enough.
Other Options
In Block
-
Olivia's Dragoon
Generally inferior to the Heir of Falkenrath
, the Dragoon is an unlimited discard outlet.
-
Collective Brutality
This card does absolutely everything this deck wants, it is just silly expensive.
-
Indulgent Aristocrat
An alternative way to eat tokens we make, and a 1 drop so that isn't a dead turn, but the sac isn't free, we lack synergy with sac outlets in general, and it lacks madness or a discard ability.
-
Whispers of Emrakul // Pick the Brain
Our budget handhate cards in the block, the former being the more annoying and the later the more reliable, both lack synergy with our deck and operate at sorcery speed, and we likely won't be hitting their delirium triggers.
Outside the block
-
Big Game Hunter
A fantastic kill spell that aims for big threats our opponent manages to pump out, and it will give us a creature to sacrifice.
-
Dark Withering
Another fantastic kill spell, this time for non-black matchups.
-
Psychotic Episode
Madness hand hate card, and better for protecting our flips than Brutality in most cases, since it can hit enchantment based removal Brutality can't, tucks it so they can't reclaim it from their grave, and shows us their next draw.
Annnnnnnd that wraps up all I have to say here for right now, other than any suggestions are welcome.
