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Red/Black Vamps

So I don't really do tournaments just play with my friends, so I can always use old and new cards.

Right now, I seem to have trouble pulling a fair amount of mana early game. No matter how I weave and shuffle my deck I usually manage to get big cost cards with few land.

I have 10 swamps and 10 mountains. Now I could technically add in more land, but I'd have to sacrifice some key cards I use to put them in.

I considered replacing 4 of the swamps with the card that gives 1 colorless and 1 black, and 4 mountains with the red counterpart to this card. However, those cards come in tapped.

So what would hurt a black/red vamp deck more (My only non Carnival of blood cards are Guul'draz vampire and vampire Nighthawk) having extra mana that's slower to use to pull out bigger/more creatures. Or just keep the mountains and swamps I have and eventually I'll get lucky enough to pull them out and pull out my smaller vamps faster because with counters they'll eventually become big enough I won't need the big creatures.

Or should I get rid of some less important cards for more lands?
Posted 23 January 2012 at 03:32

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2 replies

in a dual colour deck you probably want 22 lands, 4 of them being dual colour themselves...something like Lavaclaw Reaches

put your deck up if you want more specific tips on what to cut/add.
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Posted 23 January 2012 at 20:03

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First of playing tournaments doesn't mean you can't play old cards. I play tournaments all the time and I use a lot of cards cards that were printed 1993. What you are reffering to are standard tournaments, but you have other tournament formats as well like Modern, Extended, Legacy etc...

As for your land base, 20 land in a BR colored deck with no additional mana acceleration (usually in the form of artifacts) means most of your spells should range from casting cost 1 to 3, a few key cards can cost 4 mana and you should not play anything costing more.
If you play bigger stuff then that's the reason your deck doesn't work.

A good start is, like seras suggested, 22 land and add 4 accelerators to that. I would suggest either Rakdos Signet or Mind Stone. Both are pretty efficient.

This way you can affort to play a few higher casting cost spells. Don't push it though. playing BR means you'll have to win fast and making your deck slow with more mana and bigger dudes is a bad idea. Blue and green decks are usually better at drawing additional cards and actually using that extra mana. Now black is still pretty good at drawing additional cards so be sure to use that. Play stuff like Ambition's Cost, Skeletal Scrying, Sign in Blood etc...

good luck
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Posted 24 January 2012 at 08:36

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