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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Building a New Standard

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Tomorrow, a brave new world will open up for Magic: the Gathering players at their local gaming stores.  Like thousands of other gamers, we'll be dropping by our local store, OMG! Games, here in Barrie, Ontario to have a fun-filled Friday Night Magic evening.  With the rotation of 2 blocks (four sets), the standard card pool just became a little bit smaller, but in our opinion, a whole lot more exciting.  

The newest set Ixalan, provides some incentives to build a list based upon the four tribes of Ixalan -
• Dinosaurs (Sun Empire)
• Pirates (Brazen Coalition)
• Vampires (Legion of Dusk)
• Merfolk (River Heralds)

We have ordered the above list in line of which tribes are expected to be the most powerful in the new standard environment.  Synergies and other tribal-based bonuses are great but may not be fully realised until the next set, Rivals of Ixalan produces additional support.  

For now however, the smart player (by way of example), may not be playing a tribal go-wide strategy with Orzhov (black / white) vampires but may be better served with a token-based strategy instead, utilising some of the new vampire spells which create tokens, such as Queen's Commission or Call to the Feast.  

There are some potential pitfalls of course.  For example, playing a Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle to create vampire tokens does force one to go 'all in' with vampire tribal, whereas it may be more prudent to look to previous black / white tokens lists prior to the rotation (some of which were not that bad), and simply update that with the goodies from Ixalan.  Examples again may be Servo Exhibition and Sram's Expertise coupled with Hidden Stockpile and Anointed Procession to double-down on token producing.

Whichever way you may be charting your course, it is typically rather important to set yourself up a strong board presence upon which to build as early on in the game as possible.  Another example used here is what one would love to see in an opening hand (or early card draws) should you be playing a Naya (white / green / red) Dinosaur decklist.

Playing Imperial Lancer turn one immediately followed by Nest Robber just seems sublime as you look to land four damage on the second turn.  As these two creatures become less relevant later game then you always have fodder for chump blockers.

Likewise, as Dinosaurs are relatively a tich more mana intensive, consideration should be given to mana acceleration early game.  Whether it is a 'man-dork' or a 'Banneret' (Morningtide reference) to reduce your mana cost.  The example here may be having Drover of the Mighty come down turn turn (which is a lovely 3/3 should you already have a dinosaur out) to tap for any colour - and / or - have an Otepec Huntmaster reduce your dino overhead by one.  The Huntmaster, also provides the benefit of sending a toothy hasty surprise over the fence.  Again, building your list for synergy (whether tribal or no), should be provided equal weight in most cases with designing with your opening hand in mind.


Happy Brewing Ixalan fans !

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C17 Edgar Markov

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

The next Magic: the Gathering set, Commander 2017, based on four tribes, releases at the end of this month - August 25.  Official Wizards of the Coast previews will start next week.  

Today, Alison Luhrs, the narrative designer for WotC sat down with fellow staffer Blake Rasmussen in the first of four podcasts which are replacing written stories are all about the Vampires.   Please pop on over to this link to have a listen.  

Commander 2017 Ultra PRO products available soon

The big news out is that Edgar Markov (the first Vampire of Innistrad, and Sorin’s father) has been confirmed.  A week or so ago, Wizards updated the Commander 2017 product page with some lovely arts and many had suspected the below image to be that of Edgar or that of Runo Stromkirk, progenitor of the Stromkirk vampires of Innistrad.

BACKGROUNDER - 

Edgar Markov is the founder of the Markov bloodline, and the very first vampire of Innistrad. Thousands of years ago he was an aging human alchemist, experimenting with ways to achieve agelessness for himself and his only grandson, Sorin. When famine was sweeping the land, the demon Shilgengar convinced Edgar to start experiments with blood. Markov and his sons trapped the angel Marycz in his laboratory and exsanguinated her, preparing a decoction from her blood and created a ritual which caused his subjects to feed on the blood of other beings.
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Deck Ideas - WWK Vampires

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Good Day MTG peeps,

With the newest Magic the Gathering set now out, Worldwake, there appears to be a lot of players out there looking to either build a new deck or tweak an existing one.

To this end, we decided to run a series of articles providing some very general deck ideas. NOTE - these decks are meant for FUN casual kitchen table play or for standard constructed play at Friday Night Magic. You will note that the cards we choose may not be quite budget but will certainly not include expensive bombs the like of Wallet-Slayer Angel. We would like you to have a look and tweak these to your style as you see fit. Please drop us a comment

The next deck idea up is post Worldwake Vampires. Vampire builds are rather popular in our local metagame as we're certain it may be in many other regions. Following are our ideas for mainboard and sideboard inclusion - we had not the heart to suggest the number of each card to run - we leave this up to you to tweak and test.

MAINBOARD

Gatekeeper of Malakir - one does not mind too much not having a one-drop in this build with this guy in place to force one or more sacs.

Urge to Feed - Potentially solid removal - watch out for shenanigans. Counters dumped on your suckheads is never a bad thing either.

Marsh Casualties - Use this to rid the board of their silly 1 or 2 toughness tokens.

Bloodghast - We don't think a deckset may be necessary here - this is a good card with landfalling recursion.

Grim Discovery - who doesn't like recursion - also a solid landfall force.

Vampire Nighthawk - one of the best vamps in the block so far - we love flying deathtouch lifelinky critters.

Vampire Nocturnus - the vamp lord which delivers a +2/+1 boost and flying to your nasties is great. Drawback on this is acceptable.

Anowon, the Ruin Sage - We like this card a lot - only time will tell if this will become popular. Just drop this if you come up against a mirror match.

Mind Sludge - Perhaps too mid to late game to really hurt but give it a try - we think this rocks against those blue decks which like to draw.

Tendrils of Corruption - Awesome card dealing effective damage and buying you some extra life.

Corrupted Zendikon - again, perhaps not a deckset but we can see some uses to animate that swamp of yours.

Swamp - of course - mono-black baby !

Other considerations / Sideboard

Guul Draz Vampire - having the potential for a 3/2 with intimidate for only one mana is decent.

Sign in Blood - this could be very useful to get your leg up on your opponent - the price of two mana and two life may very well be worth it depending upon where / how you are in your game.

Kalastria Highborn - a bit unsure here - it's like that really cool chick you wanted to date but she had crazy eyes.

Vampire Hexmage - a must have against planeswalkers and other cards which pile counters on such as Joraga / Mycoloth / etc.

Bloodhusk Ritualaist - Situational to good discard card.

Malakir Bloodwitch - yep - your gonna need this against the likes of Baneslayer and other white threats.

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Anywhoos - Whichever your casual build takes you we hope you have a ton of Vampire fun - tweak this, take this out for a spin at the kitchen table or to your FNM and get back to us with your comments, feedback or constructive criticism.

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Grixis Vampires

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Happy Friday my peeps, the week's end is soon at hand and we thought a short post about those type 2 vampire decks may be in order before you head out tonight to a Friday Night Magic event at your local gamery club.


Personally, we have seen a surge in popularity in this casual deck - and really, why not? - it really does almost builds itself and it will not give a serious hoofing to your wallet.

The issue at hand for many of these vampire decks is that with pro-Black cards like Great Sable Stag, White Knight, Devout Lightcaster, and Valeron Outlander occupying sideboards everywhere, the casual vampire deck will hit a spot between a rock and a harder place after the first game in the match.

Due to this, we had been recently thinking about a standard Vampire build which is not completely mono-black. Here is something funky we came up with . . .

Creatures [20]
2 Bloodghast
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Malakir Bloodwitch
2 Vampire Hexmage
4 Vampire Lacerator
4 Vampire Nocturnus

Other Spells [16]
2 Bituminous Blast
4 Blightning
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Divination
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Terminate

Lands [24]
1 Akoum Refuge
4 Crumbling Necropolis
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Drowned Catacomb
1 Jwar Isle Refuge

Sideboard [15]
1 Bloodchief Ascension
2 Bloodghast
4 Duress
2 Quest for Ancient Secrets
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Terminate
2 Vampire Hexmage

Certainly not proven at the casual game table but we hope to try it out. All critters here are vampires and we have splashed red (and blue) for removal with the likes of Cruel Ultimatum, Blightning, and Bituminous Blast. The blue streak in here also provides some card draw in the form of Divination, our substitue for Sign in Blood.

Finally, for our beat down, we have provided a full deckset of the pro-whhite Malakir Bloodwitch which has the potential with Vampire Nocturnus to be a 6/5 beat-stick. It also goes without saying that the Bloodwitch also provides a solid answer angainst Baneslayer Angel. Speaking of protection, we also love that we are affored some comfort against Planeswalkers with Vampire Hexmage which will knock any of them dead.

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And now for something completely different . . .

You do not know (but) strongly suspect, that we, like many other MTG players, revel in our geekery. Specifically, not only do we love Magic the Gathering, but also are ardent fans of that fabled BBC Sci-Fi series Doctor Who and of any course spin-offs such as Torchwood.

As Christmas is rapidly approaching, BBC has been running this Station Identification. Luv'n it ! That TARDIS certainly gets around.

Christmas Tip : Don't forget to get that Magic Player a giftcard to the local Gaming Store or on-line retailer. If you are thinking about getting us something small (thank-you so very much), have a quick look at our Wishlist HERE at CoolStuffInc.

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Zendikar Vampires

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"One thing vampire children are taught is, never run with a wooden stake."
- Jack Handy, 'Deep Thoughts'

Today's WoTC spoiler was tucked away into the very cool Zendikar flavour write-up 'A Planeswalker Guide to Zendikar' which is worth reading before you get your head in the game. Anywhoos, back to the preview. Today we are looking at yet another vampire.

Gatekeeper of Malakir,
Creature - Vampire Warrior, Uncommon
Kicker {B} (You may pay an additional {B} as you cast this spell.)
When Gatekeeper of Malakir enters the battlefield, if it was kicked, target player sacrifices a creature.
2/2


We are just about half way through our 20 expected Orb of Insight metions of Vampire. To date, our suckheads are Blood Tribute, Bloodghast, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet, Vampire Lacerator, Vampire Nighthawk.


If you think that Zendikar to date has a strong showing for this creature type, you would be correct - Vampires are by far the most have most the numbers with the single exception of the Kor. Magic 2010 had supplied additional vampire creature support with Child of Night, Vampire Aristocrat, and the powerful Vampire Nocturnus.



Wherever your casual Magic the Gathering takes you, expect to run across mono-black vampires or other archetype variants. If you are taking this deck to your game, get ready for some fun, and if you are not, take precautions now and plan your sideboard.

Standard casual vampire-based decks are expected to carry supporting spells like of Duress, Doom Blade, Hideous End, and Tendrils of Corruption - your standard discard and destroy staples. Start planning your answers to these now but firstly, be like Buffy and grab a deck set of Undead Slayer. This card is perhaps the best answer for the vampire threat looming next month at game tables everywhere.

That's it for now but I might update this post latter after more previews roll out.

Zendikar Spoiler 4

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Wizards of the Coast just posted a great Zendikar spoiler. Today on Magic Arcana we now have a bunch of Zendikar Booster Packs images. Although we cannot glean too much from these typical Magic the Gathering spoilers, we can start speculating . . . but first to the booster packs.


Top image :

Demon dude on the left. Is is just me or does the thingy on it's forehead kind of look similar to the Worldwake expansion symbol. (Worldwake is the second / next set in the Zendikar block).

Second dude looks like a typical human warrior or shaman. Background colours suggest red mana at work perhaps.

The creepy suckhead on the right is indeed Sorin Sengir, the vampire. (yeah ! - support for vampires in this block!) Anywho - we are still uncertain if Sorin is a legendary creature or a Planeswalker at this time.
(EDIT : Good catch by Eric - Sorin confirmed as a Planeswalker - You can check out the slow spoiling at WoTC HERE.)

Bottom image:

Planeswalkers Chandra Flamedancer and the new Nissa Revane, touted to be the black / green Elf planeswalker.

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Also newsworthy are two Zendikar Intro Pack images found on the web.

Rise of the Vampires / Black
Foil Rare - Blood sorceress of Malakir
(Pack d'Intro / noir / Ascenscion des Vampires / Sorcière de sang de Malakir)

Unstable Terrain
Blue - Green
Foil Rare - Sphinx of Jwar Isle

Stay tuned for more Zendikar spoilers and other news.