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Ertai’s Trickery: The Bloodsucker’s Ball (Part 3 of 3)
Welcome back to the third and final installment of this episode of Ertai’s Trickery, the occasional series where we build a more competitive deck using raw materials from other precon and theme decks. For the Bloodsuckers’ Ball, we’ve been raiding the graveyards of a trio of Standard-environment Intro Decks: Zendikar’s Rise of the Vampires, Worldwake’s Fangs of the Bloodchief, and Magic 2011′s Reign of Vampirism.
In our last installment, we finalised a very robust removal package- exactly what will be needed to help our vampires get through. Today we’ll be looking at the our creature pool and making the final cuts.
Ertai’s Trickery: The Bloodsucker’s Ball (Part 2 of 3)
Welcome back to the second episode of Ertai’s Trickery: The Bloodsuckers’ Ball. As noted in our opening piece, we’re looking to make a tightly-focused, more competitive version of a Vampires aggro deck by combining three theme decks: Zendikar’s Rise of the Vampires, Worldwake’s Fangs of the Bloodchief, and Magic 2011′s Reign of Vampirism. The first round of cuts are always the easiest, as we clear our space of inefficient creatures, distracting spells, and off-colour cards. What’s left is a field of forty-nine cards, of which we’ll want to select only the 37 that best fit our game plan. Now that we’ve recapped our progress, it’s time to roll up the sleeves and get to work.
Ertai’s Trickery: The Bloodsuckers’ Ball (Part 1 of 3)
Welcome to a special edition of the occasional deck-tinkering column, Ertai’s Trickery. Ordinarily I post these on my main home, the precon review site ErtaisLament.com, but to help get the word out for this exciting new venture, Red Site Wins, I wanted to host this here instead. For those unfamiliar, in the Trickery series we take two or more preconstructed decks that share a theme and use them as component parts to build one improved version of the deck. All along the way we discuss the cards we like, why others are cut, and every step in the process. Readers of the Lament might recall that our inaugural feature saw us combine the Tezzeret Duel Deck, Planechase’s Metallic Dreams, and Archenemy’s Assemble the Doomsday Machine into the “Mad Machinist’s Mash-up.” Today, we’ll be taking a trio of intro decks from today’s Standard environment, and crafting “The Bloodsucker’s Ball.”
