Vampires: A Master's Guide

This is one of the pillars of our deck, and without it the deck would be so much weaker. This is what allows us to scale late game, and enables us to play aggressively in later turns. Once you activate the cities blessing all of your vampires get vigilance, and considering the deck is only vampire units, this card is amazing.

After gaining the City's Blessing, it allows us to swing with our lifelink units and block with them in the following turn.

This card is often game winning after achieving the City's Blessing

This armored beauty is how we close out most of our games and it is our main wincon if the game starts shifting towards a stalemate, as simply declaring an attack with a vampire will lifelink 1 health from our opponents, if you attack with 7 vampires, thats 7 damage, and this kicks in the moment the attack is declared, often you will kill your opponent simply by declaring the attack.

Against control this card is one of our main win conditions, and it can help close any game going late. She’s also a big body and excellent blocker against decks like RDW. And the lifelink can be life saving if we are getting low in health.

Comparable to Radiant Destiny, these cards propel us into the mid-to-late game and allow us to stay relevant if not overtaking our opponent. It's a bit dicey to play these early against certain opponents, as losing a Legion Lieutenant is often a huge blow to our overall strength. Consider the matchup when deciding when to play this card. Sometimes it is the correct decision to play Radiant Destiny before putting these femme fatales into play.

I recommend putting these down after you play your other vampires or vampire creation tools, as this allows you to immediately swing with buffed up vampires instead of having to wait another turn because of summoning sickness.

Against UW (Blue/White) Control I never swing with my lieutenants unless I have to, as Seal Away or Settle the Wreckage removing them from play would cripple the strength of our other vampires.

Although this might not look like much to the untrained eye, this is one of the best cards in the entire deck. It’s one of the best one drops as it both gives us a unit on the field and transforms into Adanto, the First Fort which is both a land that gives white mana and has an active ability to make vampire tokens.

If you can transform this early you get access to playing cards a turn earlier due to having an extra mana source.

Against control this might not last very long as Field of Ruin can snipe our fort before its had time to do much, but in all other matchups this thing is a vampire producing machine. You can activate this at instant speed as with most lands, so you can activate this when your opponent attacks to create a chump blocker or at their end step.

The tokens have lifelink which makes it near impossible for our opponent to bring us down if we have a half decent board.

I don’t tend to use the ability of this land until my hand starts running low on cards.

This deck doesn’t run very much removal, but we do run some.

Good targets for our removal are stuff like Wildgrowth Walker or Rampaging Ferocidon. It’s very matchup dependent of course, so try to be smart about it.

Don’t play the removal haphazardly, we don’t have much in the deck so use it wisely.

This land when activated can pump up all of our units by 1, considering we flood the board with vampires and go super wide this land is incredible. Try to think about this land every turn as it often enables lethal with an all in swing, just make sure to play around cards like Settle the Wreckage when you do.

On occasion this land can act as a form of removal which comes in handy since we run very few removal tools, for example it can also allow us to take out flying units which are normally very hard to deal with.

This is basically an untapped dual lands for Vampires and because all our creatures happen to be vampires by some freak coincidence this becomes an auto-include land. Keep in mind its colorless mana for spells, which is its main drawback.

Often you won’t be using this land and its borderline cuttable from the list, but in some situations this can help you in games going late against control or other midrange decks, it's wise to activate this during your opponent's turn and not during your own.

She's a bit too expensive to be in our deck normally, but she's a very strong card although extremely prone to removal. Once the blessing is activated if she's not taken off the board she will often win the game for us. Keep in mind she's very tanky, against decks like RDW she makes for an excellent blocker.

Vona often serves as a reusable removal tool, her ability to remove any non-land permanent at the cost of 7 life is nothing to scoff at. Keep in mind she has built in vigilance, so you can attack and then activate her ability for cheeky combat tricks.

This card tends to underperform which is why it isn’t in the list, but if you are lacking some of the other cards feel free to throw her in.

This card is too expensive to include normally, but it does basically win the game for you if you ever get it to stick. It also counters planeswalkers which is hilarious against decks like UW which rely on their planeswalkers to win the game.

I wouldn’t put this in the deck if I were you, but if you really want to… go for it, as the card is fun as hell to use.

In particular I’m not a big fan of this card as it only helps if you are being the aggressor, and since a lot of the meta is RDW we are often on the defensive. If the meta shifted I’d consider throwing this in the deck. If you are lacking some of the low mana cost cards in this deck feel free to try her out as she’s not bad, she just doesn’t do enough against RDW.

Don’t forget about her ability to become indestructible, this can even save her from a lot of board wipes. Keep in mind it doesn’t work against stat reduction spells like Moment of Craving or Golden Demise.