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It's always awesome when a new deck shows up in a format, and even more so at a Pro Tour when it takes the whole thing down.
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Of course, that's exactly what happened last weekend at Pro Tour Chicago, with Seth Manfield taking down the whole event with the Rakdos Vampires deck that was the breakout deck of the tournament. The 11 players playing the deck, including myself, had the best win rate in the entire event for any deck with more than two players.
It seems pretty clear that Rakdos Vampires will be a big part of the Pioneer metagame going forward, which means that knowing how to play and play against the deck will be a big deal, so today we're doing just that! We're going to play three matches with the deck in our usual video, but I'm also going to go a bit more in depth on the deck with a sideboard guide as well.
So, let's go rip some veins!
Time Stamps:
02:54 - Match 1
16:01 - Match 2
26:19 - Match 3
Rakdos Vampires | Pioneer | Seth Manfield, 1st Place Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor
- Creatures (14)
- 1 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
- 2 Dusk Legion Zealot
- 3 Preacher of the Schism
- 4 Bloodtithe Harvester
- 4 Vein Ripper
- Planeswalkers (4)
- 4 Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord
- Instants (5)
- 1 Bitter Triumph
- 4 Fatal Push
- Sorceries (6)
- 2 Duress
- 4 Thoughtseize
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki
- Artifacts (2)
- 2 Smuggler's Copter
At its core, Rakdos Vampires is essentially a Rakdos Midrange deck with major upside.
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While it started out as a more straightforward Mono-Black kindred Vampires deck, the big break in the testing process that led to Rakdos Vampires was melding it with the key cards from Rakdos Midrange. We already had Thoughtseize and Fatal Push, perhaps the two best interactive cards in the format, but adding incidental vampire Bloodtithe Harvester as well as one of the best cards in the entire format in Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki was the "ah ha!" moment the deck needed.
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Cards like Knight of the Ebon Legion and Ichor Drinker from the first draft were just far too weak, with the deck not really needing a critical mass of vampires. The utility of Bloodtithe Harvester alongside the fact that it hits pretty hard made it better than most vampires already in the deck, while Fable of the Mirror-Breaker did a wonderful job of putting it all together, as well as making it easier to just straight up cast Vein Ripper in longer games and provide another must kill threat. Smuggler's Copter fulfills a similar role to both Bloodtithe Harvester and Fable, providing a fast threat that can help smooth things out and find the correct cards.
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When it comes down to it, this is a Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord deck, but you don't need to play 30 vampires in your deck for Sorin to be good. Dusk Legion Zealot and Mutavault both provided an acceptable vampire count to power up Sorin (and Smuggler's Copter) while still maintaining a roster of individually powerful cards.
The result is a deck that can interact almost as well as a full-on midrange deck like Rakdos Midrange, but also has an excellent planeswalker as well as the high roll potential of just dumping Vein Ripper into play on turn three. That's the kind of upside that midrange decks rarely have and it's almost a freeroll. Furthermore, at only 6 mana Vein Ripper is extremely castable, especially alongside Fable tokens making extra mana and Cavern of Souls to ensure it resolves.
With Rakdos Midrange doing so poorly at Pro Tour Murders at Karlov Manor and Rakdos Vampires being the breakout deck of the tournament, it would not be surprising to see Rakdos Vampires simply take Rakdos Midrange's place in the metagame.
Sideboard Guide
Sideboarding with the deck is mostly straightforward. You'll find that Dusk Legion Zealot and Smuggler's Copter get cut a lot, but it's not because they're bad maindeck cards but often because there are just better tools for certain matchups and they're the weak links. Also nice is that because of all the velocity and draw filtering in the deck, you are often able to dig to your sideboard cards, or as in the case with Leyline of the Void, loot them away when they aren't good.
Against Izzet Phoenix
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Out:
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Against Izzet Phoenix the most important thing is stopping Treasure Cruise and the infinite Arclight Phoenix recursion, which unfortunately sees Leyline of the Void as the best possible option because of how cheap and effective it is. Furthermore, you can discard drawn copies to Fable of the Mirror-Breaker or blood tokens which is great. You don't need to mulligan for a Leyline of the Void, but you should try to be looking for one if your hand isn't excellent.
Removal is extremely important post-board against Arclight Phoenix because they bring in a lot of creatures like Crackling Drake and Young Pyromancer to get around graveyard hate, and being able to answer those in due time is very important. This is why Duress loses value post-board as most of the important cards are creatures and you're hopefully containing Treasure Cruise with Leyline of the Void.
You'll see here we're also cutting a land, which is fairly common when we've got a bit more air in our deck and want to be sure we're drawing gas. In the post-sideboard games things tend to slow down a bit so there is more time to naturally draw lands.
Against Azorius Control
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Nothing crazy here; board out the ineffective removal and board in discard and much more flexible removal. You want to be sure you've got outs to things like Chrome Host Seedshark and friends, but having removal spells that can hit planeswalkers or do other things is very important. Discard spells are naturally excellent.
The most important thing here is to properly pace yourself and make the games as awkward as possible for your opponent. This is fairly easy to do with Cavern of Souls blanking counterspells, Smuggler's Copter, Sorin, and creature lands being great against sweepers, and a lot of must answer threats.
Play tight and aggressive and remember that the games are going to go long so just casting Vein Ripper with Cavern of Souls in the mid to late game is huge.
Against Lotus Field Combo
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Lotus Field Combo is basically the exact opposite matchup of Azorius Control. Your goal here is to apply as much pressure as possible while firing in disruption in the form of discard and hate pieces. Smuggler's Copter or Bloodtithe Harvester on turn two are a huge deal, as is just having the natural Sorin into Vein Ripper turn three, but make sure you've got at least some disruption. Try to use discard to also pave the way for the hate pieces.
They occasionally have big creatures maindeck or sideboard, so having a few Bitter Triumph is nice.
Against Rakdos Midrange
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This will depend on what their list looks like exactly, but this is a good matchup because you've got similar cards but you're just playing four Vein Ripper. turn three Ripper off of Sorin is often great, but this is a matchup where just casting Vein Ripper is also excellent.
Grind, trade resources, and drop a big ripper. Try to use your discard to hit the threats you don't have good answers for, or to pave the way for Preacher of the Schism, Sheoldred, or Vein Ripper to do their thing. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is also very important here on both sides.
Against Other Matchups
Those are the big four matchups, but as for the rest of the sideboard:
Path of Peril is an excellent sweeper against all the small stuff decks, from Amalia Combo to Ensoul Artifact to Boros Convoke to Boros Heroic. It plays superbly with Preacher of the Schism, Sheoldred, and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, as well as alongside all your other removal.
In almost all of these matchups you're just playing a traditional midrange role of killing their stuff, keeping the board under control, and playing some haymakers to take things down. The only wrinkle here is Amalia, which of course can threaten to combo. You can't give them infinite time and need to be a bit more aggressive, and if they're super reliant on their graveyard with Return to the Ranks and Voice of Resurgence, you can consider bringing in a few Leyline of the Void. The Amalia matchup is a challenging one and I'm still not exactly sure what the best approach is.
Otherwise against somewhat oddball decks like various Indomitable Creativity decks or other unexpected combo or control decks like Niv to Light, you're mostly just leaning on the fact that you've got a good clock, a great proactive plan, and a wide array of discard spells to put your opponent off balance.
Turn Three Ripper Again?!
Rakdos Vampires is great and is here to stay.
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The deck is solid, flexible, and has a bunch of great interaction, but also has an excellent proactive plan which gives you a huge edge in more difficult matchups and puts your opponent into a tight squeeze. There's also no doubting the power of Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord as a fair planeswalker, and he will only get better as more vampires are printed.
I just hope we can cook up something as good for the next Pro Tour!
