Excitement Building for Innistrad and Vampires...

I must confess that the older I get, the more I love autumn.  The air is crisp, I love apple cider (who doesn't?) with doughnuts and the trees explode in color.  Now is also the time of year where the new Magic set is released.  Innistrad is almost here, and I'm excited.  My favorite holiday of the year is Halloween, and since Innistrad is all about the Gothic Horror theme, it's going to fit like a hand into the glove.

I love the articles covering the artwork of Innistrad and it's so eerie and beautiful at the same time.  I'm not sure why I love Halloween, most likely a combination of sugar, slutty women costumes, and scaring your friends silly for no good reason.  However, it's too early for Halloween talk, and this is a Magic blog. 

I've found that I love playing the color Red and it's two "Ally" colors - Black and Green.  I certainly don't mind playing Blue and White, but they're not much of my focus.  I like blazing/crushing creatures out of my way and bashing my opponent's face in.  Naturally, I already love vampires and werewolves.  This post will focus more on vampires since there's more of them in Magic already.  I'll comment on werewolves once I see the Innistrad spoiler.

Vampires have been steadily creeping into Black's dominion since the release of Zendikar.  Granted, a few existed before Zendikar, but they were pretty much few and far between, along with being confined to rares.  Sengir Vampire was the most notorious vampire, but didn't make too big of a punch.  Enter Zendikar (and a Planeswalker vampire) and we've got a few that're shaking things up in both casual and tournament scenes.  Vampire Nighthawk is a worthy 3cc vampire, along with Gatekeeper of Malakir for cheap and effective creature removal.  I believe that with the slow removal of zombies as a black creature type over the past few sets, I cannot help but wonder if Vampires are becoming the new Black tribal.  I admit that in Innistrad, they're Red as well, which only makes them better for my tastes.

In yeterday's preview, MaRo made an interesting point: B/R are not as aggro as one would believe.  I have to confess that he's mostly right.  At least, not since Invasion.  B/R creatures are not that cheap, nor are the kill spells which are used for creature removal.  At best, it's a tough control color hybrid, but little else.  I pray that we will see a return of B/R aggro with the release of Innistrad, but I'm not holding my breath.

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