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Heading into the Pro Tour, there was a lot of talk about a Black-Red artifact-fueled aggressive deck, featuring cards like Inventor's Apprentice and Unlicensed Disintegration. We saw these decks leading up to the Pro Tour, and I’m sure we’ll see them after. However, Ben Rubin and Antonino DeRosa had a different take on Red-Black featuring a powerful mythic that’s been forgotten. Check out their take on Red-Black Vampires:
Red-Black Vampires - Kaladesh Standard | Ben Rubin, Pro Tour Kaladesh
- Creatures (23)
- 4 Bloodhall Priest
- 4 Olivia, Mobilized for War
- 4 Scrapheap Scrounger
- 4 Stromkirk Condemned
- 3 Indulgent Aristocrat
- 2 Cryptbreaker
- 1 Drana, Liberator of Malakir
- 1 Hanweir Garrison
- Spells (13)
- 4 Fiery Temper
- 4 Lightning Axe
- 4 Smuggler's Copter
- 1 Unlicensed Disintegration
- Lands (24)
- 6 Mountain
- 10 Swamp
- 4 Foreboding Ruins
- 4 Smoldering Marsh
The core of this deck is very similar to the Red-Black Artifact deck. You want to utilize cards like Smuggler's Copter and Key to the City to enable madness cards like Fiery Temper and graveyard effects like Scrapheap Scrounger. These cards let you generate card advantage and tempo advantage while keeping up the pressure.
The difference here is that this deck can afford to go a little bit bigger. You have many of the same madness payoffs, but get to utilize Olivia, Mobilized for War and Bloodhall Priest to take over the game against other aggressive decks and to keep up the pressure against control decks. Given that you’re already trying to work your way up to four mana, it also makes it easier for this deck to sideboard. The deck has a transformational sideboard that lets you customize and shift your role in various matchups.
If you’re looking to play something with lots of subtle synergies and powerful cards, this deck certainly fits the bill. Madness and Vampires never really got their due in the previous Standard format, but this might be the time for them to break out in a big way.
