Since its Magic: the Gathering Pro Tour debut, the Rakdos Vampires deck has never left the top-tier categories of the deck archetypes in the Pioneer format. This is very evident in the recent tournament results posted on various MTG websites such as MTG Top 8 dot com where the MTGO League challenge event results are being posted. It shows at least two to three copies of the deck finishing in the Top 16 of the tournament.

My observation of the list revealed the hand disruption in Thoughtseize and Duress to make sure that your turn-three Sorin can resolve and drop a Vein Ripper as your main threat. In most situations, it is very difficult to answer this, especially in pre-boarded games. Most Pioneer decks have come up with solutions in dealing with the ripper but mostly handled in the sideboard.

In our playtesting at our end, we played the deck in the Explorer format in Magic: the Gathering Arena, and has also somewhat mimicked its power level in the gameplay. Here below are some of the recorded videos that we played and uploaded to my YouTube channel, Deathmarked TV.