Making a vampire tribal deck pre-Zendikar was a difficult endeavor. You were looking at a number of high casting cost creatures without a whole lot of utility. Sengir Vampire, Moroii and Skeletal Vampire were your all-stars. M10 introduced the powerful Vampire Nocturnus, but it wasn't really until Zendikar that the most efficient members of the tribe showed up. Lots of cheap powerful creatures to fill the 2 slot, and powerful cost effective creatures like the Vampire Nighthawk and Malakir Bloodwitch.Mono color decks like this can also be challenging in an environment without sideboards. You have to be very careful that your deck can't get color hosed out of the game. Black can leverage hand destruction and artifacts to deal with the necessary problem cards.
Vampires - Classic Tribal Wars
Spells
4 Thoughtseize
3 Urge to Feed
3 Nevinyrral's Disk
Creatures
4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Kalstria Highborn
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Vampire Nocturnus
4 Malakir Bloodwitch
Land
4 Marsh Flats
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wasteland
2 Mutavault
2 Cabal Coffers
11 Swamp
1 Dark Depths
This deck closely resembles the Vampire decks we saw at Pro-Tour San Juan just recently. It obviously has a more powerful pool of cards to draw from though. This deck employs Vampire Nocturnus as a potent weapon to augment the creatures in the deck significantly. Thoughtseize is a more powerful replacement for Inquisition of Kozilek. Nevinyrral's Disk an important staple to deal with problematic permanents that mono-black couldn't otherwise deal with. We also have access to Mutavault, Dark Depth's to combo with Hexmage and Cabal Coffers which allows us to ratchet up the power level further.
The rest of the creatures are right out of Zendikar block constructed: The highborn, gatekeeper and aforementioned nighthawk and bloodwitch.
Vampires is a very powerful tribe and this deck illustrates that while maintaining a strong tribal theme and even employing some cool soft combos. It's a solid deck for the format.
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