“Now I’m caught in the fold, dragging the coals.”
Art:Bishop of the Bloodstained
by Yongjae Choi
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Bishop of the Bloodstained is a very cool commander and a card I feel I undervalued for a long time. This card is very strong and allows you to swing for an amazing amount of damage. It also works perfectly with vampires, which allows us to be a strong vampire and drain and gain strategy together. Combining both of these strategies allows us to be very efficient and whittle down opponents with ease since we are on vampires being able to fly over our opponents and finish them off is very easy. While this deck operates pretty simply, it has a very good matchup against a lot of creature decks since we can often negate the damage that they do to us and have a decent board. While our vampires are not great at combat, they can hit for some small damage, which is pretty nice. Being in mono-black allows us to run a very removal-heavy deck as well as being able to re-ETB our commander with cards like Feign Death
. This deck really is the whole package and is very strong. Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Bishop of the Bloodstained Vampire Drain and Gain !
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Why Bishop of the Bloodstained?
Bishop of the Bloodstained is a very strong card in this deck but has some drawbacks, one of the biggest being that we are really don’t ever play them until we have a super big board, if we are falling behind or having trouble in the game Bishop can sometimes do nothing, but operating under the assumption that we have at least a decent board Bishop can be a great way to get an opponent into a killable range or just straight up kill them. While we do have to be ahead to get full value out of Bishop, they are still a very strong asset for the deck and a huge part of the deck.
Deck Matchups:
Since this is Pauper EDH, there are an absolute ton of things that can tip a game in your favor or out of it. While an archetype may seem favorable, there are absolutely good and bad commanders for our deck to go up against; I have included both these, which were all played among my testing groups using various decks, and I have included the sample size for clarity purposes. This is just meant to be a guide after testing a bunch of games with this deck!
The information below is notes about specific decks that were featured in our testing pods and how we fared against them. Naturally, Pauper EDH is a multiplayer game, so these are just a summary of my notes against different commanders and strategies. When we test these decks we try to test to its strengths and weaknesses to give a full spectrum of what the deck has to offer. Various commanders and archetypes/strategies are used to get the most accurate information.
Commanders, we have a good matchup against:
Stromkirk Captain
Record against Stromkirk Captain 3-1
If we can keep their commander off of the field, this is a very strong matchup for us since we have so much drain and gain. We really don’t care about their first strike, and if the combat situation is not advantageous, we just simply won’t engage in that matchup. We have much more removal than they do, but they have far more support since they have access to vampires in red and black. This is a good matchup, but if we are slow or have a bad hand, it can certainly turn into a bad time.
Loyal Apprentice
Record against Loyal Apprentice 3-0
They can get going pretty hard in the mid-game, but by that point, we have usually put enough pressure on them to disrupt their gameplan overall, and being able to kill their commander pretty much ruins their plan; they just can’t do that much to us.
Bloodtithe Harvester
Record against Bloodtithe Harvester 5-0
Keeping early-game removal for their commander is key; if they can’t cast their commander, they really can’t disrupt us at all. Even if they are able to stick their commander, we just don’t really care about any of our creatures dying. They are just not poised to beat our deck. This is a great matchup for us.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Arabella, Abandoned Doll
Record against Arabella, Abandoned Doll 1-3
This matchup is extremely tough. If we can consistently kill Arabella, this isn’t a bad matchup, but if they are able to keep them on the board, they drain and gain much more effectively than we do, and because of that, this matchup is often quite rough.
Lagrella, the Magpie
Record against Lagrella, the Magpie 0-3
I played against a control version of Lagrella and it was really rough, they often take our best drain and gain creatures like Epicure of Blood
and Marauding Blight-Priest
which can slow our gameplan down considerably, combine that with a great late-game board state for Lagrella as well as counters and protection since they are in Bant and this a terrible one.
Quillspike
Record against Quillspike 1-4
While we do have a lot of removal that can easily take care of Quillspike, they can recast them quite easily, and Quillspike can afford to wait until you have mana down and your guard is down and just take you out. Green and black are really good at pumping up the spike even without their ability. Combine that with a lot of protection from removal, and if we do have a lot of removal, this can still be a rough one. This is a very tough matchup.
Strategy Overview:
Drain and Gain:
Draining and gaining is a huge part of our deck and being able to bolster our life total while threatening our opponents is key to the strategy because of this its almost always right to keep a hand with some early drain and gain like Pulse Tracker
and Agate-Blade Assassin
which are both great ways to start off of the game.
Use our removal often:
We have quite a bit of removal, so if an opponent has a very good commander or a problematic card/creature, I tend to remove it as soon as possible. Of course, this is situation-dependent, but I think it’s a good strategy to follow.
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck! I also highlighted some of my favorite cards in the deck!
Creatures:
We have so many awesome vampires in this deck, a lot of them are the typical drain and gain vampires like Pulse Tracker but we also have some wonderful support vampires like Blood Seeker
which can punish creature decks quite a bit and help with the overall gameplan a ton. Now, let’s go over some of my favorite vampires in the deck! Creeping Bloodsucker
is no doubt a great drain and gain card, and them being a vampire helps us out too when it’s time to cast our commander. We have quite a few tiny creatures in the deck, which is why we can get a ton of value out of Driver of the Dead
, which can be really nice. When an opponent attacks, we can freely block with the driver without a care in the world! Falkenrath Noble
is another card that can really pack on the drain and gain and can trigger a ton, especially against aggressive strategies. One of my favorite support cards in the deck is Shadow Alley Denizen
, which can make our vampires really hard to block. This is an amazing way for us to deal additional damage. The last two creatures I want to feature are Marauding Blight-Priest and Epicure of Blood. Both of these are our best outlets for our drain and gain and can help to deal a ton of damage to our opponents. Our creature package is full of a lot of uninteresting vampires that do nothing but have lifelink or fly, but they are still core pieces of our gameplan.
Instants:
Removal is a huge part of the format and something that we feature quite a bit of with cards like Breathe Your Last
which also gives us some additional lifegain which is always appreciated as well as some more conventional and common removal like Doom Blade
and Cast Down
which are also really strong ways to take care of opponents threats. One of the best parts of our instant package is that we can recur our creatures with cards like Feign Death and Supernatural Stamina
not only can we use these to protect our stuff but we can also re-ETB some of our best creatures with it and being able to re-ETB our commander or a Gray Merchant of Asphodel
. If our creatures do end up hitting the graveyard we do have Raise the Draugr
which is quite efficient and allows us to recur the best of the best, since a lot of our creatures are not that impressive its not the craziest spell in the world but can still be quite strong.
Sorceries:
Gruesome Fate
is by far the best sorcery in this deck and is essentially a spell that is a copy of our commanders ability and can deal so much damage when we have a big board, an awesome card to have in our deck and can easily help us finish out a game quite quickly. Even if we have a bad combat and lose a majority of our board or have a bad game where all of our creatures are getting killed we can easily recover with Forever Young
while this card is quite slow being able to get our creatures back can help us restabilize especially since we can put the best of the best on top. Beyond that our sorcery package mostly consists of draw, which is as always ever important and while we do lose some life from cards like Read the Bones
and Sign in Blood
it really doesn’t matter at all since our gain and drain carries us through.
Artifacts:
We don’t ramp at all in our artifact package outside of Charcoal Diamond
, and that’s perfectly ok with us since we have a pretty low cost overall. Beyond that, we have some amazing support pieces like Tithing Blade // Consuming Sepulcher
, which provides a free edict effect that can be extremely strong, especially against Voltron strategies. Being able to craft it is nice, but it is not something I often do. We also have both Blood Fountain
and Ceremonial Knife
, which both produce blood tokens that can be a decent source of supplemental card draw within the deck, which is something we will always take.
Enchantments:
We are, of course, running one of my favorite spells in the whole game in Oubliette
, which is another amazing removal spell for the deck, which is something we certainly don’t have a shortage of! We also have Gift of Fangs
which is a card that can be a great way for us to increase our damage and if needed a great way to kill some early-game creatures/commanders, this card is pretty much never bad at any stage of the game. Shade's Form
is a card I love to use if we are struggling with Drain and Gain or going up against a lifegain-focused strategy. In the later turns, we can dish out a ridiculous amount of damage with it. This is a great way for us to keep up the pressure on our opponents.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Even though we may not pack the biggest punch in combat, we are able to drain and gain opponents really well and consistently and constantly threaten their life total.
- We have a ton of creature removal, and since there are so many creature decks within the format, this can allow us to be quite strong against most of it.
- Our commander can be a huge damage swing, and after all of the drain and gain we do, we can easily end an opponent’s game.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We do have a lot of creatures but a lot of them are very small, we can struggle in mid-late game combat if we don’t have flyers, luckily they are in decent supply in our deck.
- We are quite weak to control decks; we lack a big punch if our commander can’t stay out.
- We have almost no artifact or enchantment removal, decks that focus on either of these types can be rough matchups since we cant remove All That Glitters
or Whispersilk Cloak, we do have a lot of creature removal but it still can be rough if they have creature protection.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! Vampires are one of my favorite creature types in the game, so being able to play them is just so much fun. This is a true gain-and-drain vampire strategy, and it really feels extremely flavorful when you play it. Flavor, fun, and flying vampires and some that don’t fly are the true name of the game here! I hope you all enjoyed this one as much as I did! Stay tuned and tap in!