Blood Rites Precon: Decklist, Value, and Verdict

Clavileño, First of the Blessed

Whenever you attack, target attacking Vampire that isn't a Demon becomes a Demon in addition to its other types. It gains "When this creature dies, draw a card and create a tapped 4/3 white and black Vampire Demon creature token with flying."

Singles value

$154.86

TCGplayer market, 79 cards, basic lands counted at $0

Sealed price

$95.07

TCGplayer price for the box (Amazon $120.38) · singles are 1.6× that

New cards

10 / 100

First printings in this deck

Bracket

Core, out of the box

Is Blood Rites worth buying?

from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander Decks: Are They Worth It? by Timothy Zaccagnino

If you’re a creature of the night there’s plenty to love here. I’ll venture a guess and say vampires are the most popular type of the four featured in these precons, and there are plenty of new and returning vamps to make this worth a purchase. If you already have a vampire deck, you’ll get some awesome upgrades, and you’ve got plenty of support to shape the deck up how you wish if this is your first time vamping it up. The reprints are phenomenal, but I’m going to dock Blood Rites some points for being the third vampire precon, whereas the rest are all the first of their kind. Uniqueness counts for something in a sea full of endless Commander precons.

How Blood Rites plays

primer from Blood Rite Upgrade Guide: 18 Easy Changes You Can Make by Pedro Furtado (djorso)

Ah vampires, the creature type that keeps Edgar Markov in the $100 range. Of Ixalan’s four main factions, vampires are the only one that’s already been at the forefront of its own Commander deck before. Twice in fact, with Commander 2017’s Vampiric Bloodlust and Crimson Vow Commander’s Vampiric Bloodline. Blood Rites follows in their footsteps, though a non-red color identity is something interesting that only Ixalan can claim for its vampires.

Clavileño, First of the Blessed is your lead bloodsucker, showing off this faction’s demon tie-in from the main set (I’m not a lore guy, so I’m not sure what that’s all about). This is a fairly straightforward aristocrats-style deck, complete with all your typical Blood Artist impressionists (Falkenrath Noble and Cruel Celebrant), sac outlets with Yahenni, Undying Partisan or Bartolome del Presidio, and more.

Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher, the deck’s alternative commander, offers recursion and has the potential to hit hard. Carmen’s a payoff while Clavileño’s an enabler, and they both feel like they’d make sense at the helm. There’s also a number of other Boros legendary vampires here that you could sub in as the commander if you so choose.

This deck has the most strategic depth of the LCC line-up. Whereas the other three decks are laser-focused on building up a board and jamming with creatures of a singular type, Blood Rites doesn’t really even need to engage in combat to get the job done. It’s more interested in producing sac fodder and letting a few Blood Artist effects do the work for you.