So, those of you who regularly read this column know that my wife is something of a Twilight freak. Back in May, we were out visiting friends in Washington state (and one of us was attending Grand Prix: Tacoma), so she wanted to make the trek out to Forks (where the book is situated) on a… well, let’s call it “squee-filled” journey, and I don’t mean the goblin who keeps coming back to your hand.
While I was out there, one of my columns [http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/17537_Tribal_Thriftiness_70_Loose_Ends.html] contained a vampire “themed” deck. “Themed” is a very loose word, since at that time Standard contained exactly three vampires — Sengir Vampire, Blood Tyrant, and Vein Drinker. Clearly Wizards was not trying to ride the big upswelling in vampire popularity thanks to Twilight, and True Blood, and upcoming things like The Vampire Chronicles.
I mean, these are marketed more towards women, which isn’t exactly Magic’s demographic.
Right?
Well, the joke’s on me. I should have seen it coming with Vampire Nocturnus and the other vampires in M10, but I didn’t. For some reason, “Vampire Lord” just didn’t shout out to me “hey, Wizards is gonna print some vampires.” My grandma knew, though — she started picking up those Pre-Release Vampire Nocturnuses (Nocturni?) right after the set came out.
Grandma always was a shrewd trader.
The final bullet in the horse was when I showed Sorin Markov to my wife, and she said, “Well, if you make me a sparkly vampire deck, I might play Magic with you.”
And here comes the side story.
I learned to play Magic on the Portal boxed set. I bought it in a comic book store and, since we had just moved and I didn’t know anyone in the area, I begged my wife to learn to play with me. She did, and we played together, just the two of us, for a while. Eventually we met other people who played, and my wife got tired of both the game and the people who we had met, so she dropped it.
Every once in a while, though, I would beg her to get back into it. I like the time I get to spend with my wife, and we have some hobbies in common, but I would always try to lure her back to Magic. And she would always give me tasks to perform as a “condition” of her coming back to Magic.
“Well, if you made me an all-foil deck, I might play Magic with you.”
I started picking up Blue and White foils at the events I went to. Some of them were cards that I knew she liked from before, like Wind Drake or Reverse Damage. Some of them were just good cards, like Meddling Mage or (more recently) Path to Exile. This deck is now my Isperia, the Inscrutable EDH deck.
“Well, if you made me a Halloween deck, I might play Magic with you.”
We were in Neutral Ground NYC and I was picking up some things, trying to clear out my store credit before we moved away from New Jersey, and they had an All Hallow’ Eve in the display case. I have a box that has two of those in it now, along with more Headless Horseman and Frankenstein’s Monsters than have ever been gathered in one place.
“Well, if you made me a foil Merfolk deck, I might play Magic with you.”
And so I have foil DCI Lord of Atlantis and a bunch of foil Merfolk in another box.
She still hasn’t played Magic with me again.
The problem now is that I actually think a vampire deck might be playable — especially as we get more and more vampires revealed from Zendikar.
Vampire Lacerator
B
Creature — Vampire Warrior (C)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life unless an opponent has 10 life or less.
The lacerators cut themselves before each hunt. They must feed before the sun rises or bleed to death.
2/2
Zendikar looks to be pushing the power curve again. Where Alara block offset the power push by using enemy colors or three colors on creatures, Zendikar looks like it’s just pushing. Previously, we had Carnophage to look to as the epitome of black aggressive one-drops, and he was pretty successful as the front line of Suicide Black.
Dave Price’s Suicide Black deck, 4th Place, GP: Seattle 2000
4 Carnophage
4 Dauthi Horror
4 Dauthi Slayer
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Dark Ritual
4 Demonic Consultation
4 Duress
3 Hatred
1 Kaervek’s Spite
4 Sarcomancy
1 Spinning Darkness
3 Unmask
16 Swamp
4 City of Traitors
The deck was all about putting early pressure on your opponent and getting them to where Hatred was lethal. The shadow creatures provided a mostly-unblockable target for the final, lethal pump. Carnophage and Sarcomancy were vital to the deck, giving the deck eight two-power one-drops to start the beats nice and early.
Vampire Lacerator looks to be bringing some of that early pressure, but the drawback compared to Carnophage is way less severe — one, it doesn’t tap itself and give up the job it’s supposed to be doing, and two, it rewards you for being more aggressive by shutting off the drawback when you get your opponent low on life. On the flip side, Vampire Lacerator is worse as a mid-game or late-game draw, since the life payment is mandatory. But all you have to do is make sure you aren’t getting to a mid-game too often.
Vampire Nighthawk
1BB
Creature — Vampire Shaman (U)
Flying, deathtouch, lifelink
2/3
That’s a pretty nice set of keywords for three mana. Deathtouch has proven out to be relevant recently (although that may just be because Wren’s Run Vanquisher was a 3/3 for two mana in a relevant creature type), and flying and lifelink are nice. With Firespout rotating out, the non-Wrathy removal that we’ll most likely see will either be for 2 (Volcanic Fallout, Infest) or not hit flyers (Earthquake), which puts his 3 toughness at a relevant point.
Really what I’m trying to decide is, if I’m a Black aggro deck, would I play this over Hypnotic Specter? I imagine a lot of it relies on how likely I am to play Vampire Nocturnus. For a sparkly vampire deck, though, this guy makes the cut. And I like that the lifelink offsets the Lacerator’s mandatory life payment.
Bloodghast
BB
Creature — Vampire Spirit (R)
Bloodghast can’t block.
Bloodghast has haste as long as an opponent has 10 life or less.
Landfall – Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may return Bloodghast from your graveyard to the battlefield.
2/1
Here’s another new vampire that reminds me of an older card — in this case, Nether Spirit. Nether Spirit also had a bad habit of always coming back, no matter how he died. The trick to defeating Nether Spirit was to get a second one in the graveyard somehow; the trick to defeating Bloodghast is … to get your opponent to stop playing lands? Somehow I don’t see that happening, not with all the wacky land shenanigans that seem to be coming in Zendikar.
I can’t decide if I think that this will be a decently-priced rare or not. Recursion usually perks deckbuilders’ ears up, and in this guy’s case, the recursion is essentially free. I just can’t decide if there’s a deck coming that will like this guy enough to put him up in the $7-10 range. I mean, outside of this vampire deck. Mono-Black Control has a different Landfall guy that it will want to use as a finisher (see the end of this column).
Here’s the deck I’m looking at making “sparkle.”
4 Vampire Lacerator
4 VampireNighthawk
4 Bloodghast
4 Vampire Nocturnus
4 Child of Night
4 Sign in Blood
4 Duress
4 Tendrils of Corruption
2 Doom Blade
24 Swamp
Quick thoughts: It may have too much land. The vampire curve is pretty decent and tops out at Nocturnus, but with the Landfall ability of Bloodghast, the scaling land-counting of Tendrils of Corruption, and Sorin Markov up in the 6cc range, I like the idea of having a few extra lands. Everything triggers Vampire Nocturnus’s pump, except the lands — as you would expect, I guess. I’ll be looking to see what other lands come in Zendikar — hopefully a black equivalent to Valakut to make all these Swamps do something ELSE productive.
I’ll be in Philadelphia (City of Brotherly Love!) for the Zendikar Pre-Release, thanks to the timely coincidence of my brother’s wedding the weekend before. If you pick up one of these foily guys and feel like trading it to me, hit me up and I’ll try and make it worth your while. Not that I actually expect my wife to play the deck — but it’s a fun way to spend a Magical day.
Mono-Black Gets Fallen
That’s a horribly-constructed sentence from a grammar standpoint. I couldn’t even get something that made sense. “Gets felled?” Blech.
This guy showed up on the mothership Monday morning:
Ob Nixis, the Fallen
3BB
Legendary Creature — Demon (M)
Landfall – Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may have target player lose 3 life. If you do, put three +1/+1 counters on Ob Nixilis, the Fallen.
3/3
Mono-Black Control (or possibly Black/White or Black/Red) was really going to be missing a finisher, thanks to the rotation of Demigod of Revenge. I actually started contemplating Vampire Nocturnus in this role, but I think Ob Nixis is going to be a better fit. Your opponent has one shot at blasting it before it outgrows everything but Path to Exile. (Well, and neo-Wrath.) Imagine on turn six, you drop this guy, play an enemy fetchland to grow him to 6/6, and then at the end of your opponent’s turn, you fetch him up to 9/9? That first actual attack could be as a 12/12, and he may have already done 9 to your opponent.
The life loss ability makes up for his lack of evasion, and I think Black should do OK at removing chump blockers in the new Standard.
Next week: More Zendikar previews as we steamroll towards this fall’s big new set! What’s good in the common and uncommon slot? What rares and mythics should you be looking to pick up before they get unreasonably expensive?
Dave
dave dot massive at gmail and davemassive at twitter and facebook