Liliana goes Aggro

Hello everybody! When I was at FNM last night, I had several people come to me looking for advice on their deck, and then asking to trade for the cards they needed. I always enjoy helping other people out, but it was extra funny when I had 4 or 5 people come to me with very similar decks: BR Vampires. I had already traded out all my Vampires to the first guy, then the entire manabase to the second guy (got a Snapcaster DING!), so I had to turn the next 2 or 3 away unfortunately. That aside, the deck did seem very interesting and powerful. I don't have an initial decklist, but the key cards are:

Bloodcrazed Neonate
Stormkirk Noble
Rakish Heir
Vampire Outcasts
Stormblood Berserker
Volt Charge
Tezzeret's Gambit
Grim Affliction
Falkenrath Marauders

This is a very red-heavy build, although the random black cards do add good value. One of the guys I was working with was making incremental changes to the deck further improving proving by cutting cards like Bloodlord of Vaasgoth for faster cards like Stormblood Berserker that weren't initialy on his radar because of the lack of tribal. He had opened a box to acquire all the cards he needed, and in that box was a Liliana which he put in the deck because "It's black, valuable, and if I put it anywhere else I will lose it." While our games against eachother weren't very telling as he is a very new player and wasn't playing ass efficiently as he could have, there were still learning moments in that game. The most notable of these is how good Liliana was in the deck!

Liliana is this deck's Armageddon

Quick Aside
{
Armageddon was last printed in 6th edition, so it hasn't been around for a while. However, when it was around it was a very potent card for aggro decks, namely White Weenie. Basically the WW deck would build up a threatening board poition by turn 3 and then on turn 4 they would Armageddon and set both players back on mana. However, this is far from a fair trade. Just like how a control player with no creatures breaks the "symmetrical" effect of Wrath of God, the aggro player with Armageddon would gain HUGE advantages. Because now that the opponent has no lands, they can't cast any spells (read: put up any resistance) and they just have to take it like a man. If the aggro player had 4 power on board, then cast Armageddon on turn 4, by the time the defending player got back up to 4 lands, they would have 0 life.
}
End Aside

In an aggro deck, you typically drop your hand on the table and just get there before the defending player has time to stabelize. Liliana is this deck's Armageddon because while her +1 ability is "symetrical" it really isn't if you don't have nay cards in hand! Her -2 ability is huge if your opponent plays a defender like Spellskite so that you can keep on pushing through damage without a blink of an eye. And then there's that -6 ability.... I don't think that one needs any explanation. Having a planeswalker is always a great way to gain advantages, and aggro decks have been dying for a great planeswalker since they were first incepted. Usually a Koth would be the top of the curve, but having a planeswalker at 3!?!?! That's just delicious! Oh, and if you wanted to make things sweeter, we already have a proliferation subtheme!

Now that I think about it, how balin' would it be to also have a Koth or Chandra as another source of recurring card advantage? Ok, maybe not Chandra because she's pretty terrible, but Koth wouldn't be bad considering were R/b anyways! Maybe our new tricked out Vampire deck looks something like this:

4x Stormkirk Noble
1x Vampire Interloper
4x Bloodcrazed Neonate
4x Stormblood Berserker
4x Rakish Heir
2x Falkenrath Marauder

4x Volt Charge
4x Tezzeret's Gambit
2x Grim Affliction
2x Go for the Throat

4x Liliana of the Veil
3x Koth of the Hammer

4x Dragonskull Summit
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
2x Swamp
12x Mountain

The one thing that worries me about this deck is that it is possible that we cast Koth and have no mountains to work with, but with 12/22 lands being mountains, I highly doubt that happening. This is a "vampires" deck with just 15 vampires, but these are going to be very high quality vampires after just one attack due to our 10 proliferation effects, and then once we add our planeswalkers to the mix, things just start getting REALLY dangerous!

I know the people who initially presented me their BR vampire lists wanted them to be budget lists, and adding 7 planeswalkers doesn't adhere to that, but if were looking for the next big deck, this could be it!

Until next time, Stay Classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack