Pointed Discussion

oh man run this with Painful Quandary

There are only two mirran cards in MBS black. But oh, both are so sexy that'll give you instant erection. And art is nice too.

You had me at 3/3 flier for 4

This is like the Ultimate for a Discard Burn deck.

So many mono-black Commander generals are rejoicing.

This speaks to me so much as a black mage. Life Gain is not my concern, but this is so efficient I kinda have to use it.

Oh, Bloodchief Ascension, you just keep getting new toys.

Funny that this vampire is worst in a vampire deck. After all, vampire decks are normally aggro-decks. They care about killing the opponent as fast as possible. They do not care about how much life they have. So in vampire decks, this is basically a 3/3 flyer for 4, which is acceptable but not good.

In multiplayer games though this card is definately good. Though, ultimately, I'd probably play Dross Harvester instead. After all, the Harvester costs less mana, much harder to kill (protection from white and higher toughness), deals more damage, and also generates life when your own creatures (including it itself) die. If you have few creatures in your deck, this vampire might generate more life, but if you run a deck with many creatures, the Harvester is, in my opinion, superior.

That's awesome. Vampires aka souless creatures with a super unhuman power, monsterous strength & ETERNAL life. This powerhouse doesn't have eternal life persay, but his triggered ability exemplifies it. Awesome way to bring a huge part of the meaning of the word vampire to the castor of this card. Vamp decks across the planes will find a way to Inc this into their arsenal indefinitely. As will I!

This lovely lady tacks a healing salve onto a doomblade. and tacks 6 life onto a hymn to tourach. Now maybe thats not the point of many black decks. But it certainly couldnt hurt.

This complements the black color so well, especially given how suicidal black can be in terms of life loss.

Question: How does this card trigger with 'destroy all creatuer' effects. such as the day of judgement or black sun zenith (with more than 2 payed for the X)

do you get life for all your opponents creatuers or none if the sangromancer dies as well?


I still think Abyssal Persecutor is a better 4 drop than the sangromancer. especially with 'Go for the Throat' to get rid of it.

I get that it's a 3/3 flyer for 4 and all, and has a pair of decent abilities besides...but you know what? I STILL don't think finding 3 of them in a fat pack is acceptable.

Which I did.

Kinda infuriating.

@DacenOctavio It seems like people keep misreading Bloodchief Ascension. That card wants a card that will activate it. It wants anything that can deal an opponent at least 2 damage as quickly as possible. Vampire Lacerator, Lightning Bolt, Blightning, and Staggershock are such cards. After it's activated, you want a Traumatize. GG. This card compounds upon the loss from Bloodchief by gaining you life, but doesn't activate or trigger it. I still love this card, though. Very classy design.

Yeah I think I got the same fat pack as Magnor_Criol. 3 of these guys. And no mythics :(.

Yeah at least it's an interesting card.

Getting rewarded for doing what you do anyhow. Sounds good.

I'd mate with this Vamp. Vampire vag1na all the way. So worth it!

A great card, and a great fit with Dark Tutelage - the card draw would go nicely with cheap removal and discard spells. Time to go back to my extended discard deck :)

I wished it said target player loses life but you can't always get what you want.

Combos great with Massacre Wurm.
I was fortunate to draft them both just recently, and it works out great.

Wait the vampires are with the mirrans? And when did they get on Mirrodin in the first place? In the books it specifically said that Geth ruled the dross because Geth controlled the only vampire. It just seems odd how inconsistent these two story lines are with each other.

@Gavrilo
...well, I don't think moriok reaver is sexy.... (but I know which cards did you mean ;) )

Anyway, this card's art is pretty sexy. Her ability is also sexy. In the end, is there anything on this card that is not sexy?

Goes so well with Sanguine Bond; between them, they make all your removal and discard into lightning bolts

She makes so many black spells so much better!

Anything that costs you life in return for killing something on the cheap is instantly improved by her existence.

Vendetta, yes I will.

One of the coolest things she's done is made Reign of Terror viable side board material against token swarm and weenie. Yay synergy!

Dark Tutelage decks get more and more assistance...pretty fun to play this in front of a Black Sun's Zenith wiping out a hoard of Kuldotha Rebirth Goblins as well.

@jetzine
Thank you for mentioning using Traumatize with Bloodchief Ascension! This has inspired me to build a Bloodchief Ascension / Decimator Web deck. :D

eh. id do her.

Igor Kieryluk is very new... and very good. Art rocks.

Works very well in multicolor as well, Blightning becomes pretty ridiculous. Those BR decks also usually have some terminate hanging around, and of course countless others - just thought i'd mention blightning.

If Vamps make a comeback after post rotation, it will be on the back of this girl.

I just saw that Mythic Rare Vampire from M12, so yes, they will be making a comeback.

Such a cool card, love the art.

"Be Black to your bones and be rewarded."

Great Mana Cost Efficient Flier Vampire Life Gain 2 Ways Strategy 5/5

My only wish is that it gained life whenever a creature was put into an opponents graveyard, for synergy with Captivating Vampire and the other vampires that steal creatures.

Erik's Random card 7/14/2011

In design, led by Mark Gottlieb, this was originally

Hero of the Black Sun
2BBB
Deathtouch
Each other creature you control is a 3/3 Vampire and has deathtouch.
3/3

He then had an idea for a token maker to make a throwback army. He made one per color, and this was part of the cycle.

Nim Dominator
2BB
Zombie Vampire
CARDNAME gets +1/+0 for each artifact you control.
2B: Put a 1/1 black Zombie creature token named Nim Lasher onto the battlefield. It has “This creature gets +1/+0 for each artifact you control.”
2/2

He decided to tweak this to go with infect:

Vault Commander
4BB
Infect (This creature deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters.) B: Put a 1/1 black Zombie creature token with infect named onto the battlefield.
2/2

This was pretty silly. If it didn't die right away, a huge infect army would pop up immediately. So he tweaked it to cost 5BB to cast, and BB to make a token (and increased the size to 3/3).

The set was handed over to development, led by me. At some point we decided there should be a spell cycle at rare, and the Zeniths were added to the set. So we removed the cycle of token makers. We needed a build around, that would ideally be good for an intro deck.

We started with:

2BBB
Vampire Shaman
T: Destroy target creature and gain life equal to that creature's toughness. Use this ability only if an opponent has discarded a card this turn.
5/3

This didn't work quite right. If you are playing a discard deck, your opponent might not have any cards to discard by the time this is ready to use. So we changed the text to:


T: Destroy target creature and gain life equal to that creature's toughness. Use this ability only if that creature's controller has no cards in his or her hand.

This turned out to not be a lot of fun. You use discard to empty your opponent's hand, then cast this super-Visara, and kill all their guys. Effective, but it wasn't a good match for an intro deck. So I went back to Mark Gottlieb for help. Soon the rules text was:

Flying
Whenever CARDNAME deals combat damage to an opponent, that player discards a card. If that player can't, he or she sacrifices a creature.

That was more interesting, but now it was a Specter, and we needed a Vampire.

I talked to Mark about this, and the development team, and we finally came up with:

Flying
Whenever a creature is put into an opponent's graveyard from the battlefield, you may gain 3 life. Whenever an opponent discards a card, you may gain 3 life.

This was fun to play, and felt like a Vampire. The text was tweaked a bit, but is essentially what we printed. It was a long and windy road to get to the final card!

Hmmm... I guess it renders spark elementals kind of pointless, so that's something...
I could see using it with Windfall though

Very fun with Smallpox.

Apparently creatures that die at the same time (due to Wrath for example) see each other dying and this will trigger for all creatures your opponents control on board wipes. Makes it pretty acceptable in multiplayer formats.

I really tried to make a deck work around this vampire (just 'cause I'd love the art and the flavor). But I couldn't... yet.
In monoB there are a lot of better four-drops, even among the vampires, like Bloodline Keeper or that negator-with-steroids, Obliterator. Besides in turn 4, you're hoping to cast a Lashwrithe.
Let's wait for Dark Ascension and see if WoC print some tools for this girl. So we'll see a competitive B control/discard deck.

Why is the oracle text so retarded? "whenever a creature an opponent control dies"? DIES? Really? I thought WotC had established a clear nomenclature with "when a creature is put into the graveyard from the battlefield" and now the oracle text is using words like "dies". WotF, WotC.

I've recently seen her showing some great promise in a mono black aggro build where she held some superb synergy alongside Phyrexian Obliterator, Liliana of the Veil, Royal Assassin, and your standard boat of removal. Makes me wish Bad Moon was legal in standard just to sock it to tier one!

Great Card Cant find it a slot though in my Vampires Extended Deck. Maybe at the Cost of the Doom Blades.

I bought my friend some of this card as singles, and he loves them; it fits perfectly into his standard-legal mono-black control deck. Everyone who knows both me and him hates me for it.

@Kragash: That's because when this card was printed the keyword "dies" wasn't in use. It came in with M12 to mean; "is sent to the graveyard". The Oracle text is always right, and the most up-to-date.
Things like this are pretty common; back before the keyword "Vigilance" for example there were creatures who had the ability "This creature does not tap to attack", but in the Oracle text, it was replaced with "Vigilance" because that's what we now know it as.

Imagine this in Modern with Sanguine Bond. Every doom blade is also a lightning bolt.

@ Kragash: WOTC officially adopted "dies" as a keyword for M12.

This is literally my favorite black card. Thank you wizards for tickling my niche... 5.5/5. Igor, you should be proud of this depiction. I could jerk w/o lube to this picture, and for that I thank you.



P.S. Glad to see it has not been reprinted. I vote this card stays that way.


P.P.S. Helping Black mages in showing those frail White mages how life gain is really done! >=D

So there's something I've always been curious about with this card. Yes she's very sexy (both card-wise and.. Well... Just look at her. We'd all tap that), but I wonder about her second ability. So if they have 8 cards and have to nix one, that's a free 3 life to you, (or you can be a *** and play Horrifying Revelation and Mental Agony and spam the crap out of life). But what about if you have a Fiend of the Shadows? If she dealt direct damage, and had Sangromancer on the field at the same time, then when the person exiles their card, do you get the three life for that as well? Or is it only specifically for things that mention "discard?"

You can't go wrong with this card and Liliana of the Veil. Make everyone discard, gain at least three life. Someone sacrifices a creature? Gain three more life! Rip up half of your opponents field? I bet there were some creatures in there! Let's gain some life!

This in EDH with Death Cloud. Nuke the board, everyone's life totals, and everyone's hands, then gain lots of life from this? seems pretty good to me...

Forcing somebody to exile a card from their hand wouldn't trigger the 2nd ability since it's not a "discard" similar to how you can't gain life from a Soul Net when a creature gets exiled from play. However, I believe you could still gain life if they had a Library of Leng and chose to discard to the top of their deck, since it's still describing it as a "discard".

Perhaps someone already did this; but I have to comment on the flavor for this card. It is a black Vampire with the Mirran watermark. From what I've seen, there simply aren't that many black Mirran cards, or vampires, in the Mirrodin Besieged block. What was the thought behind this card? What would she be doing with the rest of the Mirrans, who tend to lean towards white? I don't know. Just caught my mind.

Mitigates the cost of Phyrexian Purge as long as you have enough life to pay for it in the first place.

Vampire stripper? wut?

This is not rated more highly why? Decent cost, awesome ability in blue, and black. with newer cards like Sands of delirium and curse of the bloody tome she is amazing. give her some form of protection and your set. On her own maybe not amazing and she scream's KILL ME NOW, but still amazing. Favorite vampire art.

4/5. A 3/3 flyer for 4 is average, but the life gain bonus for removal is over the top.

Sweet art.

That is all.