Bloodlust

In Magic, when you think of ampires, you usually think mono-Black. Of course, Black get’s all the cool vampire “Lords” like Vampire Nocturnus or Captivating Vampire. However, the Innistrad block allowed vampires to bleed over into Red (pun fully intended!). Now that the block is complete, I found myself wondering if a mono-Red vampire deck was possible. There are definitely enough red vampires to build a deck, but would it be any good?

Here’s a theoretical list I came up with:

4x Stromkirk Noble

4x Bloodcrazed Neonate

4x Falkenrath Exterminator

3x Crossway Vampire

3x Erdwal Ripper

3x Rakish Heir

2x Markov Blademaster

2x Falkenrath Marauder

4x Lightning Bolt

3x Vampiric Fury

3x Volt Charge

2x Blade of the Bloodchief

1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

2x Teetering Peaks

20x Mountain

This deck is the essence of pure aggro. It does not seek to play a long, interactive game. It just wants to hit you with Vampires until you are dead. Blade of the Bloodchief is pretty silly, but it’s on-theme mechanically AND flavorfully, so it’s too perfect not to add. Plus, it’s super-cheap to cast and equip and gives us something to do Turn 1 if we don’t have a Noble in our opening hand.

Volt Charge is also a cutesy trick, as every single creature in the deck has the ability to give itself +1/+1 counters. It’s also a good way to clear a blocker out of the way.

Then there’s Vampiric Fury, which I included just because Red seems to have a lot of good  three-drop Vampires, but not too many two-drops… that said, I think Fury will actually be pretty relevant a lot of the time.

Markov Blademaster should probably be a 3x or 4x, but I wanted to give the other Vampires at 3 CMC a chance before cutting them for the Blademaster, which I already know is quite good.

Planar Deck

Bloodhill Bastion

Edge of Malacol

Feeding Grounds

Grove of the Dreampods

Kilnspire District

Stensia

Sokenzan

Shiv

Turri Island

Undercity Reaches

The choices here are all pretty obvious. Most advance the aggro plan in some way or another. Bloodhill Bastion and Sokenzan let my vampires hit harder AND faster. Kilnspire District, Grove of the Dreampods and Turri Island let me cast them earlier or cheat them out. Undercity Reaches keeps my hand full of gas. Edge of Malacol can slow my attacks to a crawl, but I have a few Haste-y Vampires already, but Malacol artificially charges up my Vampires in the mean time. Stensia is just a gimme.

This deck probably has little chance of winning a 4-way Multiplayer game, but if your opponents all happen to be playing slow-ish decks, you just might pull it off. Unfortunately there isn’t really much of a Plan B. You just have to swing every single turn and hope it works out in the end. But that’s pretty much the modus operandi for Red anyway, right?

If nothing else, this deck should satisfy your bloodthirst.

Enjoy!