FNM B/W Vampires - 1st Place

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We have some news we are happy about from the Friday Night Magic event at OMG! Games Barrie.  Before we get to that, a quick look at the week two metagame evolution with results from this weekend's SCG Classic in Philadelphia.  Here are the Top 16 Standard Classic Decklists :

1st Mono-Red Aggro Aiden Brier
2nd Mardu Vehicles Robert Stanley
3rd UW Eternalize Austin Herrick
4th Grixis Energy Tomas Hoffman
5th Grixis Improvise John Hughes
6th G/R Monsters Kevin Michael
7th Grixis Control Nicholas Ailes
8th U/B Midrange Benjamin Ragan
9th Jund Midrange Craig Rocco
10th Grixis Control Andrew Lopez
11th Grixis Energy Kevin Jones
12th B/R Aggro Aaron Schwarcz
13th R/B Aggro Ryan Carey
14th U/B Control Jacob LeJeune
15th Mono-Black Aggro AJ Kerrigan
16th Mardu Vehicles Joshua Schaffer

Still nicely diverse with no monoculture and we love where the game is at right now.  At my local gaming store, it appears that Grixis Energy as well as G/B Constrictor were representing fairly well, with the rest of the field quite diverse as expected with innovative and exciting decklists such as Abzan Tokens, Grixis Control and tribal strategies with Dinosaurs and Vampires.

With 4 Wins and 1 Loss, we think although we did well, we realise that there were a number of critical 'top decks' which helped push Black White Vampires through the field.  Instead of going through the decklist we used (it has already had a few minor amendments for next weekend), we should cover the core basics of the list as well as notes of some cards which had performed very well during the games.

The Buff
Legion Lieutant, Metallic Mimic and Radiant Desitiny all had a full four copies to buff the vampire team.  The Radiant Destiny anthem effect worked well and did produce the extra bonus of delivering vigilance (Ascend / City's Blessing).

The Ping
Both Vicious Conquistador and Sanctum Seeker's ability to deal non-combat damage to a player should not be underestimated.  We had anticipated Seeker's double-black casting cost to be awkward in a list which is around 60% white spells, but Unclaimed Territory (naming vampires) went a long way to smooth this out.

Honourable Mentions
What we had thought worked quite favourably.  Dusk Legion Zealot was great for card advantage which is critical when most of your creatures are low to the ground.  Legion's Landing is necessary later game to create a vampire token which typically hit the game table buffed.  Duskborne Skymarcher provided a solid creature, often buffed to get in some evasive damage.  Gifted Aetherborn also did some leg-work which forced opponents to think twice about attacking.  Dusk // Dawn reset the board, often with our own pumped creatures hitting the graveyard, but the Aftermath ability rapidly replaced board presence.

Should you be thinking about a post Rivals of Ixalan vampire tribal list, we will suggest you may be well served in reading ChannelFireball's article, Vampires with Rivals of Ixalan By Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, which supplied us with motivation in starting with this tribe.

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