Quote Originally Posted by DMofDarkness View Post
I've got several friends running this deck, and here's some basic advice: Get more Stromkirk Nobles. You want a full set. Also Bloodcrazed Neonates. Next, take out Curse of Bloodletting and skeletal grimace, and add Arc Trails. Your plan for the early game is to get in with a couple of growing dudes, and in order to do that you need to clear the field for it. Arc Trail helps there. Next, add more removal. Take out the Bolts and the Duresses if you want it to be standard, and add in Go for the Throats and Incinerates. Vampires you can safely cut out include Child of Night and Vampire Interloper, in case you find you need more room later. Finally, 24 lands is too much. You should probably run 22, and add some Dragonskull Summits and/or Blackcleave Cliffs.
Okay, how does Incinerate Measure up to Shock? I'm honestly curious, because it looks like one mana for one damage, which isn't exactly excellent. Is there something I'm missing?

Quote Originally Posted by Bucky View Post
Okay, easy part first. Curse of Bloodletting should be cut because, by the time you get to 5 mana, they should have less than 10 life left. At that point it's better as Lava Axe. And if you don't want lava axe, you can just cut them.

Skeletal Grimace is horrible against a lot of decks, but maybe reasonable against some of the others. Move it to the sideboard to free up a slot.

The critical part of Duress is it's one of the few things you want to be doing on turn 1. That means you need to come up with 4 more things to do on turn 1. If you want Undying Evil for your vampires, that's fine, but be sure to add stuff you want on turn 1, like more Nobles or even Fume Spitter or (particularly sadistic with Rakish Heir in the deck) Infiltration Lens.

Lastly, you should make some minor adjustments to your mana base. You are trying to curve Markov Blademaster into Bloodline keeper. Unless your lands show up perfectly (2 of each), you will need a nonbasic to do so. A couple of Dragonskull Summits will make a noticeable difference. Also, consider running one Stensia Bloodhall over a spell for extra reach.
Honestly the Skeletal Grimace is a placeholder, it was first on the list to be replaced anyway, and the curse can go too. What I don't see is what Fume Spitter will do for me, and Infiltration Lens is nice, but is it really worth including? And Undying Evil is useless, most of the Vampires will have +1/+1 counters. And Duress will have to be cut, because I do want to have at least one standard deck.

How many of my other vampires should I be going for? Should I go for four Keepers and Blademasters, or leave them at two and three?