Hello Everyone! My intent is to create a mono-black, midrange vampire deck for modern. I have looked around tappedout and this seems to be the best mono-black midrange vamprie deck out there. If you can find a better one, don't hesitate to let me know! Disclaimer: At this point, this is looking more like a rush deck than a "midrange deck."
Overview: I tried to design this deck to be versatile.(hopefully I did a good job) Therefore, I chose cards that take advantage of the vampire archetype, such as Anowon, the Ruin Sage, Vampire Hexmage, and Vampire Nocturnus. I also chose some cards to ensure a steady early game, most notably Vampire Cutthroat, and strong game-enders such as Remorseless Punishment and Sorin's Vengeance. The goal of this deck is to sort of "drain" away the opponent's health. Optimally, victory should be achieved around turn 7 or 8. The midgame is where this deck truly shines.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Although you can win through lots of different ways with this deck, the most important card is Vampire Nocturnus. You sort of want to drop creatures to get through the first few turns and then BAM! You drop the Vampire Nocturnus, giving all your creatures +2 attack and flying, and then you can rush the enemy.
You theoretically should be able to finish the game without losing a single creature. Vampire Hexmage, Mirri the Cursed, and Feast of Blood should be able to outtrade quite well. I would not recommend using creatures to block damage to your face unless necessary. However, don't be hesitant to trade in your Vampire Nighthawk to remove a threatening creature
Weaknesses: Vampire Nighthawk, Vampire Hexmage, Feast of Blood, and Gatekeeper of Malakir are really the only defenses against an early rush so this deck is somewhat weak to goblin rushes or other types of speedy rushes. This deck does slightly better against slower decks due to the high removal, such as Gatekeeper of Malakir, Feast of Blood, Remorseless Punishment, and Vampire Nighthawk. Another notable weakness is the lack of ability to remove artifacts, enchantments, or equipment. This tends to be a common weakness of mono-black decks in general. Another weakness is that this deck relies heavily on Vampire Nocturnus to ensure that the rush is successful.
Basic Strategy!
Early Game (Turns 1-4): Your early game will mostly feature Vampire Nighthawk, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Vampire Cutthroat, Vampire Hexmage, and Drana, Liberator of Malakir. Feel free to be somewhat aggressive with your flying creatures such as Vampire Nighthawk and Drana, Liberator of Malakir. Vampire Nighthawk serves as a strong source of healing and also can be used to block annoying creatures. The deathtouch also comes in handy all throughout the game, so it's power never really falls off. Gatekeeper of Malakir not only offers good removal but also a nice 2/2 body, making it also very versatile. If you are fortunate enough to get Drana, Liberator of Malakirand some other creatures, feel free to use her to attack. The buffs to your creatures will really come in handy.
Mid Game Turns (4-7): This deck is designed to have many options to transition to a powerful midgame. Your most powerful tools will be Mirri the Cursed, Anowon, the Ruin Sage, and Vampire Nocturnus. Make it a priority to bring these badboys out. Vampire Nocturnus is your most important card. You ideally want to have about 2-3 creatures when you drop it, which gives everything flying and +2 attack. Since every card of this deck is black, Vampire Nocturnus will always provide the +2/+1 and flying buff. Anowon, the Ruin Sage forces your opponent to sacrifice a creature during each of your upkeeps. You can think of it as a free Cruel Edict each turn. This deck is extremely strong during this stage, but you should still be wary for enemy tricks. If you suspect that your opponent is ramping for an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, you might want to play more aggressive and aim for an earlier victory. If you suspect that they have a trick up their sleeve, such as Lava Axe, then you should play accordingly. By turn 7, its incredibly important to whittle down your opponent's health. However, you can also play other useful cards such as Sign in Blood for extra draw and Remorseless Punishment to slow down your opponent. In most cases though, these cards are secondary to your bread-and-butter creatures such as Anowon, the Ruin Sage and Vampire Nocturnus.
Late game (7-Infinity): If your opponent is not dead yet, he or she should be in range for you to pull Sorin's Vengeance and finish the game. That is, in my opinion, the coolest finisher in existence. But I understand that having an opponent under 10 health on turn 7 with Sorin's Vengeance in your hand is extremely rare! I understand that sh*t happens. DO NOT FEAR! I have some solutions. Every card in this deck was designed to be useful throughout the entire game. No card falters in usefulness, even on turn 30! Even your trusty turn 2 Gatekeeper of Malakir can serve to not only protect your face but also to remove that pesky Bane of Bala Ged. However, there are some especially powerful cards to break through and end the game. These are Remorseless Punishment and Sudden Spoiling. These two are very strong at ending games along with Sorin's Vengeance. With all of these tools, you should be able to finish the game. I can't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to.
Thank you for reading and please leave suggestions! I really appreciate it!
Edit Log
10/17/2016-Removed 3 Dark Ritual, added 2 Sudden Spoiling, added 1 Drana, Liberator of Malakir. The Dark Rituals were removed because they are not modern-legal. Since all of the other cards are modern legal, I decided to keep this deck modern-legal and just scrap the Dark Ritual. Sudden Spoiling was recommended by Mairon_Bauglir. I believe that it is a very strong card that can not only buy time but also shut down the opponent. It has great synergy with Bloodline Keeper
.
10/20/2016-Swapped out 2Hero's Downfall for 2 Doom Blades. The Doom Blades are one mana cheaper than the Hero's Downfall, and therefore is a better card except against matchups where the opponent has black creatures. If the opponent has black creatures, swap out the Doom Blades for the Hero's Downfall in the sideboard.
10/20/2016-Removed 1 Consuming Vapors and added 1 Gatekeeper of Malakir. This was done to help balance the curve and just because Gatekeeper is more versatile for this deck.
10/20/2016-Removed 2 Painful Quandary,1 Undercity Plague. Added 1 Anowon, the Ruin Sage, 1 Remorseless Punishment, and 1 Sorin's Vengeance.
10/29/2016-Removed Liliana Vess, Ob Nixilis Reignited, and Sorin Markov. Planeswalkers just do not fit in with this deck unfortunately. It doesn't have the power to protect them because you should be using most/all of your creatures to attack the opponent. Additionally, the potential planeswalkers all are too expensive or too slow to reach that desired turn 7 victory.
10/29/2016: Added 2 Doom Blade and removed 2 Geth's Verdict. I thought that since we already have 4 Gatekeeper of Malakir, we have sufficient removal against those pesky indestructible creatures or the horrible creatures with regenerate/shroud/hexproof. Geth's Verdict also proves to be weaker against decks that utilize cheap, fast, little creatures because the opponent can just sacrifice a weak creature. Although little creatures can prove to be a very large threat, this deck is more concerned with eliminating the very specific threats that make make our strategy completely fall apart. Therefore, Doom Blade works slightly better.
11/7/2016: Removed Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Dark Impostor, and Captivating Vampire from the sideboard. I removed Gray Merchant of Asphodel because it's just not that good in this deck. This deck is not devotion based, and Gray Merchant of Asphodel is also not a vampire so it does not synergize well. Dark Impostor and Captivating Vampire are just way too slow.
11/7/2016: Added 4x Pulse Tracker, removed 2 Bloodline Keeper
, removed 1x Gatekeeper of Malakir, removed 1x Doom Blade. This is probably the biggest, most drastic change so far. I wanted to make this deck faster, so I added the card:Pulse Trackers. Although they may not seem that good, they synergize quite well with Vampire Nocturnus. It was a very tough decision to reduce the amount of Bloodline Keeper
s. However, upon realizing that I could not include Dark Ritual in this deck because it's not modern-legal, I realized that Bloodline Keeper
is just too slow for that desired mid-game victory. It was also unbalancing my curve by making it too 4-drop heavy. I still left 2 Bloodline Keeper
to help out for that late-game victory. However, I intend to make some more fine-tuning later, probably by adding some Vampire Interloper.
11/7/2016: Removed a bunch of random cards from the maybeboard. I should have done that a while ago, when I was still brainstorming for my idea for this deck. At the time I was considering a mono-black deck without a specific archetype. The original maybeboard cards really weren't that good, but I never had a chance to get around to removing them.
11/10/2016: Removed Despise and Inquisition of Kozilek. I added Dash Hopes. I done this because I feel that there will never be a point where we need to remove a specific creature or a specific noncreature card under 3 mana. However, I did keep Thoughtseize because that removal is unlimited. I just realized how good Dash Hopes is so I'm gonna add that. It's really good because this deck focuses on burning down the opponent's health. 5 health is alot to pay against a deck like this.
11/11/2016: Removed 1 Pulse Tracker, 1 Gatekeeper of Malakir, and swapped the 3 card:Doom Blades for 3 Feast of Blood. Added 2Dash Hopes. I swapped the card:Doom Blades for Feast of Blood because the latter is unconditional removal, whereas card:Doom Blade is not. I understand that Doom Blade might be slightly better, but you really don't want to risk playing against a deck running black minions, leaving you with useless cards in your hand. After your first game in a multiple-game match, you can swap out the Feast of Bloodfor Victim of Night, Go for the Throat, or Grasp of Darkness.
11/11/2016: Removed the last of the Bloodline Keeper
s. I replaced them with 1 Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief and 2 Pulse Tracker. Bloodline Keeper
is just too slow and does not fit in for that optimal turn 6-7 win condition. I found this kind of ironic because Bloodline Keeper
is what inspired me to make this deck in the first place.
11/11/2016: Added 2 Kalastria Highborn. Removed 2 Pulse Tracker. Pulse Tracker ended up being way too reliant on Vampire Nocturnus to be reliable after turns 1 and 2, and therefore had to be replaced.
11/11/2016: Removed Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief and added 1 Kalastria Highborn. Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief isn't very good. I'm not sure why I added it in the first place.
11/14/2016: Removed 1 Kalastria Highborn and added 1 Swamp. Explanation will be provided in a later log where I also explain why I removed the rest of the Kalastria Highborn.
11/14/2016: Replaced both Pulse Trackers with Vampire Cutthroats. Vampire Cutthroat turns out to be the superior version of Pulse Tracker. It's skulk allows it to keep its usefulness even after turns 1 and 2, and the lifesteal makes it synergize better with Vampire Nocturnus than Pulse Tracker.
11/14/2016: Replaced 2 Swamps with 2 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. I did some calculations and found that Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx will provide more mana than just Swamps even as early as turn 3. I think this ramp is worth the tradeoff of mono-black mana but I will have to test this some more.
11/14/2016: Removed Consuming Vapors and 1 Sorin's Vengeance. Added 2 Mirri the Cursed. Mirri the Cursed is very strong and can help defend your face.
11/14/2016: Removed 1 Remorseless Punishment and added 1 Vampire Cutthroat. This change was to help smooth out the curve.
11/15/2016: Swapped out 2 additional Swamps for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. This was a change that should have been done the first time I added Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.
11/21/2016: Removed 2 Dash Hopes and added 1 Vampire Cutthroat and 1 Feast of Blood. Dash Hopes turns out to have appeared better than it actually is. Giving your opponent the option to choose is never helpful and 2 mana can be better spent than chunking 5 life off the enemy.
11/26/2016: Removed 2 Necropolis Regent and added 2 Vampire Hexmage. Necropolis Regent is too slow unfortunately. After its played, it takes at least 1 turn before its effects of buffing your creatures can be reaped.
11/26/2016: Removed 2 Kalastria Highborn and added 2 Vampire Hexmage. I just remembered that this deck really isn't supposed to be trading creatures. You also should not be losing alot of creatures, so Kalastria Highborn is not that good in this situation.
12/16/2016: Removed 2 Sorin's Vengeance and added 2 Swamps.
12/17/2016: Removed 4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and added 4 Swamps. By the time the Shrines become effective, the game should be over. You never should need that much mana more than you should need the black mana.
3/3/2017: Sideboarded 4 card:Vamprie Hexmage for 4 Gifted Aetherborn.
8/4/2017: Added Fatal Push to the maybeboard.
