Of all the tribes of Ixalan, Vampires seem to have been left by the wayside when it comes to exploration of Standard playability. Most players are excited for the opportunity to play with Pirates and Dinosaurs, the flashy new tribes, while Merfolk have their diehard supporters. Vampires, on the other hand, seemed to have been left behind. At least until this weekend, where Phillip Braverman put them to the test at Pro Tour Ixalan:

Mono-White Vampires - Standard | Phillip Braverman, Pro Tour Ixalan

• Creatures (22)
• 3 Angel of Invention
• 3 Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle
• 4 Adanto Vanguard
• 4 Aviary Mechanic
• 4 Legion Conquistador
• 4 Metallic Mimic

• Enchantments (10)
• 1 Thopter Arrest
• 2 Cast Out
• 3 Ixalan's Binding
• 4 Legion's Landing

• Artifacts (4)
• 4 Oketra's Monument

• Lands (22)
• 15 Plains
• 3 Scavenger Grounds
• 4 Shefet Dunes

Buy This Deck

The keys to this strategy are Legion Conquistadors and Aviary Mechanic. These are the cards that let you maximize your value off of Oketra's Monument and ensure that you can go wider than your opponent. They also help you set up turns where you can flip your Legion's Landing and start grinding out value with Adanto.

On top of all of that, you have access to Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle as yet another way to go wide and Metallic Mimic to pump up the size of all of your Vampire tokens. This is a deck that can aggressively curve out with two-drops and three-drops, spend a few turns generating some extra tokens, and then go wide with Metallic Mimic and Shefet Dunes.

If you’re looking for a deck that exploits the formats over-reliance on spot removal rather than actual sweepers, this seems like a reasonable way to do it. It’s an exciting deck that can play both aggressive and midrange styles, and can do so on a relatively tight budget.