How does captivating vampire work

Mind Control -ing a creature is incredibly powerful, and while having five Vampires around to do it used to be a problem, Edgar Markov opened up Captivating Vampire to the world of EDH and it's just as powerful as ever as we see a new influx of Vampires. Cordial Vampire has certainly flown under the radar since it was printed in Modern Horizons because Vampires never really got off the ground as a Modern deck. While Humans and Merfolk and Zombies and Elementals and Crabs who-knows-what-else were viable tribal Modern brews, Vampires never was and so Cordial Vampire was forgotten.

But now in the context of Commander, I want to draw attention to this text: " Whenever Cordial Vampire or another creature dies. Any creature dying grows your Vampire team, and that's going to be huge in any new Commander brew.

Indulgent Aristocrat gets a shoutout here for being another forgotten Vampire "lord. Sanctum Seeker and Champion of Dusk represent the other half of this alternate lord combination. Champion of Dusk is an actual bomb - I've seen it take over in Constructed formats - and Sanctum Seeker has Craterhoof Behemoth -like ability to just end games on the spot. It's that good. Another Ixalan rare long forgotten, Mavren actually got a little bit of run in Standard during her time.

But if we get a chance to play White Vampires in this iteration of Innistrad, then it's time to dust off those Mavren Feins and dig out those tokens. Especially in combination with Sanctum Seeker , you can take an innocuous board and turn it deadly very quickly. One more Ixalan block shoutout has to go to Forerunner of the Legion , which allows you to find any of the cards we've talked about so far.

Sure, putting a card on top of the library is much different than putting it into your hand, but if it's good enough for Enlightened Tutor it's good enough for Forerunner of the Legion.

This one never quite delivered on its potential, as the Standard format shifted away from it and while it came in a Vampire-centric set, it wasn't really one geared at Commander.

As such, Twilight Prophet kind of floated around the edges of playability, and was forgotten in many Commander decks. But it's a must-include in any Vampire deck. The Vampire tokens you can generate make acquiring the City's Blessing trivial, and once you do the Prophet becomes a must-remove threat for your opponents.

You choose to activate SA again. You control the Behemoth. The Behemoth has summoning sickness new object , but for him that doesn't matter because of Haste. Improve this answer. Hackworth Hackworth This is a great answer that really dives into how the abilities behave and resolve in regards to the Stack, which I was also hoping to see. I'm glad you also addressed that I would need to wait for my SA to resolve before triggering it again, so that I can avoid making that mistake in the future.

Works like this He taps his vamps and targets your fatty. You respond by exiling the fatty and him coming back in. His ability resolves, but because its target is no longer in play it's a different instance it fizzles. So you can use that ability as evasion. That changes the potential dynamics of my deck quite a bit, thank you! Sign up or log in Sign up using Google.

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Now live: A fully responsive profile. Related 2. Hot Network Questions. However, that's not all that Captivating Vampire brings to the table. By tapping any five vampires you control, Captivating Vampire allows you to gain control of target creature, turning it into a vampire in addition to its other types.

Sorcery that truly encapsulates the concept of vampirism, Blood Tribute allows you to deal damage to an opponent equal to half their life total rounded down. However, this spell possesses kicker. While most kicker costs require their controller to pay additional mana, Blood Tribute merely requires its controller to tap a vampire they control.

If they do, not only does an opponent lose half their life total, but you gain life equal to the amount that was lost, swinging the game into your favor. A double-sided card from the original Innistrad, Bloodline keeper is a card capable of amassing a great deal of value for its controller if left unchecked.

As if this weren't already a consistent means of growing your vampire brood, as long as you control at least five vampires, you can pay one black mana to transform Bloodline Keeper, flipping it into Lord of Lineage. Vampires have the distinction of being one of the only tribes in Magic to have access to a tribe-specific equipment.

For only one mana of any color, Blade of the Bloodchief is an equipment that contains a very manageable equip cost of one. However, if the equipped creature is a vampire, this amount is doubled, allowing for the blade's controller to buff up vampires in their army for very little mana as the game progresses.

While not necessarily a vampire tribal card, Blood Artist is a two-mana vampire that no vampire deck would want to be without. With the ability to deal one damage to any player and then gain you one life whenever a creature dies, Blood Artist allows for its controller to weaponize the deaths of creatures on the battlefield. Opponents are disincentivized to sacrifice their own creatures and destroy yours, while with a big enough board state, a board wipe can be turned into a victory through the direct damage a Blood Artist can deal.