Vampires
Magic the Gathering has leaned heavily into horror in recent years, particularly with the two cycles set in the horror-plane of Innistrad. Vampires might well be the most classic creatures of modern horror, with a firm place in pop culture ever since the day of Bram Stoker's Dracula. We're glad they're so well-loved in Magic, and so well designed too. Wizards make great efforts to make vampires feel like vampires in-game with creative use of keywords like lifelink, flying and first strike that capture the abilities of vampires from legend, alongside mind control and life draining abilities that are right at home with their classic depictions.
History and design is all well and good, but we know you're here to draw blood. So join us as we explore the children of the night, and find out who is Commander's Head Vampire.
Honorable Mention - Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
If you thought there was nothing more frightening than a blood-crazed vampire, you obviously haven’t met a blood-crazed Phyrexian vampire.
Kalitas has a pile of useful abilities, but the most important is that he is a zombie-making machine. Every nontoken creature belonging to your opponents that dies for any reason is going to join Kalitas’ zombie horde as a 2/2 token. What’s more, those creatures get exiled instead of hitting the graveyard, which can really hose some graveyard-focused decks. Plus if he happens to gets peckish, Kalitas can eat any of those zombies or any other vampire at instant speed to grow himself, making him a real nightmare to block if you have a lot of mana up and helping to fuel his lifelink.
Kalitas doesn’t quite make our top ten because his sacrifice ability is too expensive to be a reliable sac outlet, and his incidental exiling of your opponents’ dead creatures is only at its best against decks that have some graveyard recursion. That said, Kalitas is a toolbox card you will want every time in certain games, and he’ll more than hold his own in the 99 of any vampire deck, or any zombie deck for that matter.
10. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose
Vito is strong enough to work perfectly well outside of vampire tribal, although he will excel there too. His main ability is exceptional with any lifegain, something vampire decks of course have in abundance with all their life link and drain effects. Even if you don’t have natural lifegain on all your creatures, his activated ability offers it anyway, threatening a huge life swing with any all-out attack. Best of all in Commander, you don’t even have to direct the life loss at the same opponent you attacked, allowing you to pick off weakened opponents even if their board state is strong.
We’ve looked before at how Vito forms an easy and devastating two-card combo with Exquisite Blood, creating an infinite loop with the potential to kill any opponent as early as turn five. If you want to get really flashy, he can kill all your opponents at once if you can cause them all to lose life simultaneously with a card like Ayara, First of Lochthwain. Given the wealth of tutors available in Commander (particularly in black), and the ability to have permanent access to Vito as a commander, this isn’t even a particularly difficult combo to pull off if your opponents lack immediate answers.
9. Nighthawk Scavenger
Hands down one of the best vampires recently printed, Nighthawk Scavenger puts Vampire Nighthawk – previously a staple of many a vampire deck – in the shade. The Scavenger offers all of the flying, deathtouch and lifelink goodness we expect from a card carrying the Nighthawk name, but with a far, far higher power ceiling. If your opponents have even a single card in their graveyards – any fetch land, any sacrified bauble or traded creature – Nighthawk Scavenger already matches the power of Vampire Nighthawk. Much more likely in your average Commander slugfest, this card will be scavenging four, five, six, even seven card types in graveyards, offering you a major evasive threat that gains you huge amounts of life every time it connects.
If any of your opponents runs any kind of self-mill them, this card is an absolute must against them, but we’re confident it’s easily good enough to make it a staple in the 99 of any vampire deck regardless of your opposition, and probably many other black decks besides.
8. Captivating Vampire
There aren’t many cards that better capture the famous hypnotic charm of vampires than Captivating Vampire. One look in those mesmerising blue eyes, and any creature you target will permanently cross over to your side, even if Captivating Vampire later leaves play. He even comes with a lord effect attached, pumping all your vampires into the bargain.
Of course, for such a powerful effect on a three mana card there has to be a pretty major catch, and for Captivating Vampire it’s the fact that you need to tap a massive five vampires to steal a creature. That’s a little less difficult than it sounds because Captivating Vampire can tap itself as one of the creatures, but you’re still going to need a veritable army of the night to reliably activate this. The good news is, there are plenty of ways to generate vampire tokens, including via some important vampires that we’ll meet later.
This card synergises even better with vampire token strategies in that it can offer them a significant buff in combat whenever they’re not being tapped to tempt the best creature on the board to your side.
7. Blood Artist
It’s not often we recommend and 0/1 for 2 mana, but just bear with us while we paint you a picture of Blood Artist’s true potential.
Blood Artist isn’t essential in every vampire tribal deck, but it is a key piece for any aristocrats theme.
This card will gain you an extreme amount of life while dishing out life loss to each of your opponents, all while you accrue value with cards like Skullclamp and Ashnod’s Altar. The fact that the artists is happy to paint any kind of gruesome demise, not just those of your own creatures, means that you’ll benefit from all of the carnage happening across the battlefield as well as your own sacrifice shenanigans. He’s a great lifegain trigger too for decks with any lifegain synergies.
6. Bloodline Keeper
A real classic from the original Innistrad, Bloodline Keeper is your very own free vampire factory. Left unchecked, he spits out 2/2 flying vampires every turn, which in decks built around vampire synergies gives you endless ammunition and triggers for all your vampire-related abilities.
And that’s not even his final form! Once you have five vampires in play, Bloodline Keeper can transform into Lord of Lineage, a beefier (and much uglier) 5/5 flier that gives a huge double lord effect to all your vampires. Don’t worry about losing that sweet vampire making ability either – Lord of Lineage can keep on spawning what will now be 4/4 fliers every single turn. Dedicated vampire decks should be able to transform this card pretty early in the game without needing to create too many tokens first, offering a huge boost to your entire board.
5. Bloodlord of Vaasgoth
Giving every vampire the ability to enter at +3/+3 is so good. Vampires are very evasive so triggering is easy, and counters are more devastating on fliers.
Bloodthirst hasn’t traditionally been too strong of a keyword, particularly in Commander where aggressive strategies are generally a lot weaker than in other formats. Bloodlord of Vaasgoth however is most certainly the expection to that rule.
Bloodthirst 3 is no joke if you can reliably trigger it, although it would still be very underwhelming if all it could do was make the Bloodlord itself a 6/6 flyer for 5. There is so much more potential here though, because the Bloodlord grants ever vampire you cast Bloodthirst 3 of its very own, threatening to make even a lowly Blood Artist into a relevant 3 / 4 body.
4. Twilight Prophet
Vampires fly over your opponents and suck the life right out of them – we expect no less from them, and Twilight Prophet is no exception. What vampires don’t reliably do is grant you card advantage, and that’s what Twilight Prophet brings to the table, all while packing the punch of a game-ending finisher.
You’re going to need the City’s Blessing for Twilight Prophet to come into its own – without ten permanents, this is a very underwhelming 2/4 for 4, and it’s that fail-case that keeps this card from the very top of our list. This is Commander though, and you can expect to reach ten permanents pretty reliably in most games, particularly if you’re playing a deck that generates tokens or has any way to ramp lands into play. And once you’ve got that blessing, Twilight Prophet becomes a card advantage engine that can also threaten to win the game on its own.
Every single upkeep, you’re guaranteed to draw a card, which already matches black staples like Phyrexian Arena without any of the life loss. In fact, assuming the top card of your deck has a non-zero converted mana cost, you are going to be gaining life, and your opponents will be losing a whole bunch of it. Pulling even a single five mana card with this is an enormous life-swing, hitting your opponents for a total of 15 life loss while healing you five, and it only gets crazier when you hit your most expensive spells. That’s exceptional value while drawing cards, and will keep you relevant right into the late game.
3. Olivia Voldaren
Olivia is flexible, strong and always relevant, but the best part about her might just be the sheer perfection of her flavour. With her two mana ability she bites a creature and turns it into a vampire, all the while drawing strength from it for herself. Mere 1/1s like simple human soldiers are too weak to be worthy of converting, so she drains them dry instead. Then, once she has sired a new vampire, she can naturally bring the fledgling under her spell, gaining its permanent loyalty as long as she lives.
Huge flavour win aside, Olivia’s abilities are a great late game mana sink when empty handed, offering you a potential army all on her own. She also lets you snipe down small utility creatures like opposing Blood Artists or Llanowar Elves before they have chance to become a problem, all while constantly growing her into a bigger and bigger flying threat. There’s a reason Olivia is at the top of vampire society.
2. Anowon, the Ruin Sage
From your opponents’ point of view, Anowon is guaranteed to live up to his name, and has been ruining everyone’s fun since Worldwake. Clearly built for vampire tribal, assuming you run only vampires, Anowon is an Abyss attached to a 4/3 body that doesn’t affect you. That is the definition of a must-answer for your opponents, particularly if their decks lack a lot of expendable creatures to sacrifice. In a way, Anowon’s biggest disadvantage is that he is guaranteed to unite the table against you, at least until he’s removed.
Anowon only gets to do his thing if you reach at least one upkeep with him, making him an ideal creature to flash out with a Vedalken Orrery just before your upkeep to give your opponents the minimum time to remove him. If he triggers even once, he will more than pay for himself, and if he sticks around to trigger multiple times it will be a hard game to lose.
1. Edgar Markov
Who else could top our list but the patriarch of the Markov family himself, the great and terrible Edgar Markov. Edgar’s dominance as a vampire tribal commander is total, and it’s honestly hard to make a case for any other commander for vampire list. Normally we’d have some debate about cheaper options that can come out faster and impact the game earlier for aggressive plans, but Edgar Markov’s Eminence ability means that he doesn’t even need to be in play to have a constant impact on the game. Just by sitting in the command zone, he gives a free 1/1 flying vampire with every single vampire spell you cast, which might honestly be enough to get him the commander slot in a lot of decks even if he didn’t do anything else.
But of course he does do other things, and they are frightening. Once in play, he can attack immediately thanks to Haste, and is tough to block thanks to First Strike. On top of that, with every attack he permanently grows every vampire you have in play – including himself – so that even if he can be successfully blocked he will still have a lasting effect on the board even as he retreats to the Command Zone to continue pumping out 1/1 fliers.
Maybe one day Wizards will print a legendary vampire that offers more as your Commander, but for now, there’s only one king of the night.
Jonathan Widnall
- Jon Widnall