Vampire: deck recipe

The strategy of this deck is to swarm the field with multiple DARK Zombie-Type monsters and maintain control of it with Vampire Kingdom.

There are two types of Vampire monsters: the ones that have the ability to send cards from the opponent’s deck to the Graveyard and the ones that use Life Points as a resource to gain advantage.

The archetype is still lacking a few important cards, but, thanks to the fact that all Vampire monsters are Zombie-Type, the deck can use cards like Gozuki and Samurai Skull to increase its consistency.

When summoned, Black Luster Soldier - Sacred Soldier puts one of your banished LIGHT or DARK monsters back into the graveyard to banish 1 card on your opponent's field. Vampire Retainer and Vampire Familiar both banish themselves when they leave the field after being special summoned by their own effects and are both DARK attributes. This makes them the perfect fuel for Sacred Soldier's effect, as these low-leveled Vampires are often used as tribute fodder after being special summoned and therefore banished. Putting the low-leveled Vampires back into your graveyard would also allow you to special summon them later on for further searching and tribute fodder. The skill Cyber Style can easily put 2 Proto-Cyber Dragons on your field as tribute fodder for Sacred Soldier.

Running both Gozuki and Samurai Skull may seem redundant, but it’s necessary: it’s the easiest way to get Vampire Retainer and Vampire Familiar into the Graveyard.

The best way to start the duel is to send either Vampire Retainer or Vampire Familiar to the Graveyard with one of these two.

Gozuki’s secondary effect will not come into play that often since you’d have to banish one of your two searchers from the Graveyard in order to activate it and Special Summon a monster from your hand, but, if Samurai Skull is destroyed by your opponent’s card effect, you will get Special Summon a Level 4 or lower Zombie-Type monster from your deck, trigger Vampire Retainer or Vampire Familiar’s effect.

These two cards allow you to add from your deck to your hand a Vampire Spell/Trap and a Vampire monster respectively when they are Special Summoned at the cost of 500 LP. Retainer and Familiar can be Special Summoned from the Graveyard by their own effects by discarding a Vampire card from your hand or sending a Vampire card from the field to the Graveyard.

Unfortunately neither Gozuki nor Samurai Skull can be used to activate their effects and Special Summon them from the Graveyard since they are not part of the archetype, but you can use any Vampire card. You can activate Vampire's Domain’s effect and then send it to the Graveyard to Special Summon either of these monsters: you will still get the additional Normal Summon/Set of the effect from Continuous Spell.

Retainer and Familiar are incredibly important, they give you access to cards like Vampire Scarlet Scourge or Vampire Kingdom whenever you need them: you don’t necessarily need to run three copies of both thanks to Gozuki and Samurai Skull, but, due to the cost of their Special Summoning effect, having other Vampire cards in the deck doesn’t hurt.

After Special Summoning these cards you can tribute them to get Vampire Scarlet Scourge or Vampire Grace on the field.

Vampire Grace is an incredibly good monster because her “bleed” effect has no requirement: you can just send a card from the opponent’s deck to the Graveyard once per turn. Vampire Lord and Vampire Lady have to inflict battle damage to the opponent, so they should be avoided, but Vampire Grace should definitely be run at one copy: you can search her from the deck with Vampire Familiar, Special Summon her from the deck with Vampire Takeover or from the Graveyard with Vampire Scarlet Scourge.

Why is the “bleed” effect important? It’s certainly not because you are trying to deck out your opponent: it’s because of Vampire Kingdom.

Vampire Kingdom is the Vampire Field Spell, it can be searched by Vampire Retainer or just activated from the deck with Takeover; it gives your Zombie-Type monsters a 500 ATK boost during damage calculation and, when a card is sent from the opponent’s deck to the Graveyard, you can target a card your opponent controls and destroy it. This is the card that allows you to keep control of the field and Vampire Grace is the easiest way to activate its effect.

The reason why this card is here is pretty simple: the deck has no way of dealing with backrow aside from the destruction effect from Vampire Kingdom.

The deck focuses on finishing the opponent quickly, so this card is perfect to enable some OTKs.

Enemy Controller is one of the most, if not the most, versatile cards in the game: it can be used both defensively and offensively. You can utilize this card to get Vampire Retainer or Vampire Familiar into the Graveyard while also taking control of one of your opponent’s monsters or just tribute Gozuki and trigger his effect.

While this card may look like another Continuous Spell that’s already in the game, Call of the Mummy, there are a few reasons why this one is a better choice in this deck: it can be searched by Retainer, it doesn’t require you to have an empty field to activate its effect, it can be used as activation cost for either Vampire Retainer or Vampire Familiar after its effect is activated and it allows you to gain back some Life Points, which are a very important resource in this deck.

There is another Trap Card in the deck, but it doesn’t really matter: Treacherous Trap Hole is one of the best cards in the game, being able to destroy two monsters on the field is just absurdly good in a format with three Monster Card Zones.

There really isn’t enough space for backrow and taking out copies of Gozuki or Samurai Skull to add a Wall of Disruption is not really advised, so Treacherous fits perfectly.

This card was notably better in the TCG: in a 20-30 cards format, there’s a higher chance that you will draw into your Field Spell either before or together with this card.

Vampire Takeover allows you to activate Vampire Kingdom for deck and only from there, which means that, if you draw Vampire Kingdom, Takeover becomes a dead card.

In addition to getting the Field Spell out, Takeover also Special Summons a Vampire monster from your Graveyard in Defense Position.

The only problem this card has, other than becoming a dead card after you draw your Field Spell, is that it’s a Trap Card.

• Keep in mind that you can’t use Retainer or Familiar on the field as activation cost for Vampire Retainer or Vampire Familiar if they have been Special Summoned by their own effect because they can’t be sent to the Graveyard.
• If you think your opponent has a Treacherous Trap Hole face-down, call “Trap Card” with the “bleed” effect, you’ll nullify it.
• You should not call “Monster Card” against Amazoness (Amazoness Baby Tiger), Masked HERO (Destiny HERO - Celestial).
• The matchup against Amazoness is rough: if Retainer or Familiar are banished, you can’t get the search effect; a Holy Guard Amazoness deck can just attack into your monsters and banish them freely; Amazoness Queen is problematic without Vampire Kingdom or Treacherous.
• Going first against Fur Hire is another problem: you’ll have to survive a turn in order to make your plays.
• Backrow heavy decks are difficult to deal with: packing some more removal or even a Jinzo can be a good idea as it shuts down Amazoness completely.

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