Hey, I like what you have going on here. How do you feel about infinites? Blood Artist, Oathsworn Vampire, and Phyrexian Altar along with Edgar’s Eminence ability can kill everyone with endless death triggers for Blood Artist. Leonin Relic-Warder and a enchantment like Animate Dead will do just as well with Blood Artist too. This works great as a Plan B in case your aggro plan goes wrong, or Plan A with good hands leading into it.

For a while I had my own doubts about Anointed Procession, but once I figured out how much insane value it generates in Edgar I’ve never taken it out. Pairs VERY well with Bloodline Keeper, he transforms all the more faster and makes double the tokens. I won a game with just him and Procession before because my opponents happened to not have any answers.

I’ve found that incorporating more Control/Stax pieces has made winning with aggro a lot easier. Turning creatures side ways isn’t the fastest win con, and anything we can do to stall our opponents out helps a lot.

mardufam: Woah, hi! What a coincidence that you should comment on my deck, mardufam. I stumbled across your Edgar Markov build a couple weeks back, and it inspired me to tweak my list closer to yours. It's pretty cool that you discovered my deck, and I really appreciate the feedback. I have actually created a copy of this deck that I had kept private for the time being, so that I could mess around with tentative changes to the list. But since you stumbled on this list, I have made the other list public so that you can see it. I would really appreciate it if you could give me feedback on it!

Essentially, my vampiric bloodlust v2 list will share more similarities with your list; however, it represents a more budget take on it (no moxen, mana crypt, etc). I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. I initially discovered your deck as I was searching for more "staxy" builds of Edgar once I realized how strong grave pact/dictate were in my own games, so I searched out more optimized lists to guide me. That's when I discovered yours.

I do not have a problem with infinites; I would include Phyrexian Altar in a heartbeat if I owned it. However, I don't own it at the moment, and it'll probably be a while before I buy it. Do you think Ashnod's Altar is a suitable replacement for it in the meantime? I still have it in my maybeboard on my v2 list

I’m glad someone’s been inspired by my brewing, it’s been the biggest struggle to gain any traction with discussion on the EDH Reddit page. Absolute crickets on the last thread I posted. Too many people are overly attached to the pure aggro Edgar, and I think this is a mistake. Too many games end up at best taking one player out of the game, while your other two opponents had/have more than enough time to deal with you while you were aggro’ing out. Besides, pure aggro creature beats is the most difficult win con in EDH, so naturally it makes sense to better develop Edgar to not be a one trick pony and have more diverse routes of play and winning. What happens after a boardwipe? We either have to have enough resources to bounce back onto the aggro plan (not impossible but not easy either), or have a alternative win con. Which is why I wanted to include infinites. They’ve greatly boosted the playability of the deck because it no longer necessarily folds after a well timed boardwipe.

Looking at the new list, it’s a complete upgrade from your current list. Maybe I’m just biased because you’re including my tech, but I promise you the deck will perform better with those inclusions.

There really is no replacement for Phyrexian Altar, as you can’t go infinite with it in the first combo I outlined. It is a great value card that primarily helps speed out vampires and bigger spells, and of course is a means of abusing Grave Pact/Dictate of Erebos. Budget options would be Leonin Relic-Warder and Animate Dead to go infinite with Blood Artist. Animate Dead is maybe $2 and Leonin is like $0.25 at most. Leonin might seem odd outside the combo, but he actually works much like Fiend Hunter. You can play him, then in response to the first ability sacrifice him at instant speed with a sac outlet like Viscera Seer. The second ability will trigger returning nothing, then the first ability will resolve and permanently remove the artifact/enchantment. What’s also great about this is then we now have him in the grave to later follow up with Blood Artist and Animate Dead to go infinite and win.

You might disagree with me on this, but I’m planning to cut Ashnod’s Altar, Shared Animosity, and Mirror Entity for Thoughtseize, Duress, and Pyroblast. If we’re in a position to consistently connect blows with our vampires and win that way, Shared Animosity and Mirror Entity seem a little win more. We’ll kill maybe one opponent this way, and since it’s so heavily telegraphed that they’re next, our other two opponents are likely to have answers to them or just have a boardwipe ready after they let us take out someone for them. Thoughtseize and Duress will snatch Cyclonic Rifts, Toxic Deluge, and Fire Covenants, or whatever spot removal away from them hopefully before they even have opportunity to use them. This is arguably more powerful than these buffs as it better cements our aggro win because we took away their answers for it. They also have the added benefit of possibly straight up taking away our opponents win conditions from their hands. In general they just give us access to interaction with sorceries and instants, because unlike Blue we don’t have real counterspells. Pyroblast is another means of strictly hating on Blue, it’s really just as if not more valuable to have than Cavern of Souls. I feel like any balanced playgroup ought to have at least one blue player so it shouldn’t ever be a dead card.

There’s probably more changes I would make, but more or less what I’d be saying is replacing more of your own inclusions with my own instead. That’d be cool but I also kind of want to see what your creativity brings out. I just might borrow some of your ideas! :)

I meant to say Ashnod’s Altar is great for X and X reasons, but the same is true for Phyrexian Altar. Slight typo there, wish tappedout had a option to edit comments.

mardufam I really appreciate how much effort you put into your response, and you've definitely given me a lot to think about. I likely will end up buying Phyrexian Altar at some point in the future; I just need to figure out what to do in the meantime. Do you think Oathsworn Vampire is still worth running without the infinite combo, or should I replace him with something else? I slotted him in thinking that I could still get a lot of incremental value out of him with the amount of lifegain cards I am currently running.

I do like your leonin relic warder combo, but I am on the fence whether or not I should include it in this list. Since this is more budget-oriented, I do not have Imperial Seal or Demonic Tutor, so I am thinking that I would not be able to consistently tutor for the relic warder or animate dead. And because my tutoring would be less consistent, I am evaluating Leonin Relic Warder and Animate Dead on their own. I really like using LRW as removal (sac in response to the trigger, as you mentioned) to then recur later when we are ready to combo off, but I feel underwhelmed by Animate Dead on its own. As most of my vampires are low cmc, it hardly seems worth it to play animate dead to bring back a vampure without a 1/1 token from the eminence. This is the only thing holding me back from including the LRW-animate dead combo in the list (but I am open to further considering it). You seem to address this problem in your list by adding a reanimator package, with some high value recursion targets to make them stronger on their own when not used as part of the combo. I might look more into this route in the future. Also, if you were looking for more reanimation in your list, have you considered Dance of the Dead?

Thank you very much for your feedback and inspiring me to incorporate more stax/control elements. In regards to my updated list, do you think Ashnod's is good enough on its own to include? If so, what would you suggest cutting for it (until I can acquire phyrexian alter to replace ashnods). I would also be open to including duress and thoughtsieze, since you seem to place a heavier emphasis on them. Would you have suggestions on what to cut to make room for those cards as well? I must admit though, I am pretty hesitant to cut Shared Animosity and Mirror Entity, based on how well they have treated me in the past. Shared Animosity has allowed me to kill a player out of nowhere, and, even if my opponents have an answer afterwards, I find that eliminating the strongest player at the table (or the one most threatening to my gameplan) has been worth it and allowed me to grind a win out with the remaining players. I may end up cutting Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, as much as I don't want to. I really like being able to constantly +1 to create tokens to sac, especially with Anointed Procession and/or Smokestack/Contamination in play. Thank you again for your response!

I am sorry to hear that you haven't been able to get a discussion going on Reddit. I read through some of your posts, and you have definitely put a lot of effort into tuning your list, and it is a shame that more people aren't open to having a discussion about it. I'll keep an eye out on reddit in the future for your list if you ever do try to start another discussion about it.

Also, what do you think about Cover of Darkness? I'm not sure that I need both Cover of Darkness and Blind Obedience in the deck, and other than the occassional extort trigger, Cover of Darkness feels like it would be better. Or do you think both deserve a spot in my list?

Reanimate, Animate Dead, and Necromancy also work on creatures in other graveyards. It would be fun to force them to discard a creature off of Thoughtseize and then Reanimate it. Steal important recursion targets from our opponents when you fave against the likes of Muldrotha and Meren. There’s many reasons why I like them.

My real problems with Mirror Entity and Shared Animosity is twofold:

1) They’re most impactful when our board state gives us a insurmountable advantage, at which point they’re redundant. At least with how my deck operates, if I have a board state with he likes of both Grave Pact and Contamination/Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon, etc to try and have as much of my opponents incapacitated as possible then these really don’t matter much.

2) If you don’t have 1), you need to aggressively leverage as much politics as possible to ensure that these are not drawing the very likely to happen hate that will come flooding your way.

At least from my experience that’s how it is, and the circumstances where it doesn’t go over well out number the ones where these situations somehow work out.

I’d squeeze in Thoughtseize/Duress/Pyroblast somehow. I think having a wellrounded interaction package is really good, as these cards are answers for things we typically struggle to deal with in our colors.

I’ll have more to say on the other cards in a later post.

Hmm, you make a good point about them being win-more when you already have stax pieces out. Since I haven't playtested the changes yet (due to waiting on cards in the mail), I hadn't considered them being win-more in that context. If your opponents' boards are clear already, then they will die in another couple turns anyway due to combat damage, and the slots of shared animosity/mirror entity would be opened up to something more useful. I think I will keep shared animosity and mirror entity in for now, and see how the deck plays out and if I find them to be win-more.

I actually have very little blue in my playgroup, so I am wary to include pyroblast at this time. I am also trying to snag a deal on ebay on a copy of phyrexian altar, so I have 3 cards I need to make room for: thoughtseize, duress, and phyrexian altar (or ashnod's in the meantime?). Some of the cards on my shortlist for cutting to make room are Patron of the Vein, Vona, Butcher of Magan, Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, Phyrexian Reclamation, Oversold Cemetery, Blind Obedience/Cover of Darkness. Or I would be open to hearing which cards you think would be better cuts in place of these I am considering.

Within reason, lowering the mana curve of your deck will help speed it up, so those high costed cards are good cuts. I feel that the others are from fine to cut too, but Blind Obidience is an alright card. It taps down artifacts so that means any mana rocks opponents play are not immediately tapping for mana, that’s worth something. Tapping creatures would be excellent value in 1v1, but in multiplayer it’s not quite as impactful as I’d like it to be. It can shut down certain strategies certainly but I always feel like I could have something a little better to replace it.

mardufam Alright so I've found room for thoughtseize and duress, now I just need to find room for phyrexian altar. I was thinking that either Patron of the Vein or Vona, Butcher of Magan would be on the short list of possible cuts for the altar, but do you think there are other weaker cards that would be better cut first? Thanks again for all your help

I ended up cutting Cover of Darkness for phyrexian altar; I will playtest the deck and see how it feels. I may end up swapping some cards in/out, but it feels like it is in a pretty good spot right now.

Hey, did you ever consider playing Dismember ? And also Scapegoat ? Someone mentioned that card on reddit and I really like the effect. It can not only save your board, but also be used aggressively to re-trigger Purphoros with your small Vampires

Dismember is solid as 1 mana removal for most creatures. I messed around with Scapegoat for a bit, and it does have good synergy with Purphoros and Malakir Bloodwitch, as well as serving as boardwipe protection. It's just hard finding room for them. I'm opting to go a bit more all-in on the aggro strategy, which means I am running light on removal to increase my early game consistency.

I have a number of pending changes that I am playtesting, which haven't been reflected in this list yet.