Vulture
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Contents
Overview
For a creature with a cost of 3 
and only 0|1 stats, Vulture can be a bit underwhelming at first. However, Vulture truly shines because of its ability to bridge offense and defense in a deck: offensively, Vultures can make control cards like Plague or Rain of Fire into huge buffing cards for themselves, while defensively, Vultures can help provide a disincentive for the opponent in killing your other creatures.
General Use
Quick Facts:
- Scavenger activates on friendly and enemy deaths
- Best used in a control heavy or minion heavy deck
- Hold Vultures in your hand until they're ready to be buffed!
Compared to its 3 costing buddies, the Mummy or Flesh Spider, Vulture seems almost worthless, starting out with no attack and a single measly point of health. For this reason, it is common for players to usually keep Vultures in their hand and avoid playing them until a combo can be pulled off. Because of its largely niche role and moderately expensive cost to its initial stats, Vulture does not see much use in most decks that aren't tailored for them. After all, a Vulture in a deck not built around death effects is worth just as much as a dead card, and even worse than a Photon that packs 1|1 for free.
Most Vulture decks are based around creature control, and instantaneous, fast, AoE creature control is preferred. Because of this preference for AoE, Vulture based control decks are particularly strong against rush decks that tend to spam lots of weaker creatures on the field. While the buffs that Vultures get are slow, they represent a way for stall or control decks to get some steady damage on the board.
Conversely, Vulture is also a card that may see use in rush decks that spam creatures. The logic is that a deck with lots of creatures would fear AoE, but Vulture allows some form of insurance, as each killed creature will give a +1|+1 buff to the Vulture, and with enough of these birds on the field, they might even overshadow the creatures that they once stood next to, waiting for them to die!
Scavenger is a unique and useful ability, as it allows this carrion carnivore to easily combo with lots of elements, as most elements pack some form of creature control. In essence, Vulture is a card that is powerful, but patient, a game of steadiness and attrition, something that Death is all too familiar with, as espoused in cards such as Bone Wall and Poison.
Synergies
When it comes to death effects, the first creature to come to mind will be this adorable critter. With merely a 1 
upkeep per turn, a single Schrodingers Cat can churn out enough death effects to buff a whole field of Vultures, and this ability's effectiveness only grows exponentially as the number of birds and cats increases. This strong combination also highlights the synergy between and . Entropy also has the powerful Maxwells Demon, a strong creature capable of repeated CC, and the risky Pandemonium for AoE CC. Death can make use of all these death effects with cards like Soul Catcher to help pump out Vultures easier, or Bone Wall to stall while the Vultures get fatter.
As the strongest AoE CC card in the game, Rain of Fire is the obvious choice to be picked alongside Vulture. 3 damage to the enemy's entire field is almost guaranteed to wipe at least away half of the opposing creatures and to give every single Vulture a big buff in stats. Rain of Fire is preferred to the slower Plague that's in Death's own element because Plague deals damage over time, and thus takes a few turns for death effects to happen, and also has the side effect of resulting in creatures with different HP ding at different times. Rain of Fire solves these problems by instantly eliminating creatures with 3 or below HP; this large buff can be a game changer as it can quickly push Vulture's stats out of lethal range from a card like Shockwave or Lightning. While both of those control cards also synergize nicely with Vulture, AoE spells are still a better match. Dry Spell is a Water spell that will deal 1 damage to all opposing minions (with a boost to 2 if upgraded) in addition to producing 
, which can fuel Chrysaora or freezing cards for more stall. For a cheaper alternative to Rain of Fire that still packs a punch, Thunderstorm is just that, doing 2 AoE damage at less than half of Rain of Fire's cost. Flying is another element that goes well with Vulture: Wings allows the user to avoid damage from grounded sources, and even Sky Blitz can be used as a last desperate measure to make Vulture even more deadly.
Boneyard is a card that especially builds off death effects and helps buff Vultures even faster when combined with the cards mentioned above. For each creature that dies, a 1|1 Skeleton is generated, and because of their frailty and ease of being killed, Boneyard essentially makes all deaths a 2 for 1 deal. Death as an element comes packing a lot of synergies based around creature deaths, and these include Skull Shield, which has a chance of instantly killing any attacking creature, as well as Virus, which guarantees at least one death. Aflatoxin is a possible gambit that involves filling the opponent's field with Malignant Cells and then pulling off an AoE CC to pump Vulture's stats to ridiculous levels. This slow build up is also emphasized in the rare weapon Arsenic which will slowly prick the opponent while building up poison as the death effects and Vultures both keep on growing.
Other Cards With Synergy
For a gimmick, Spark is a card that can be used to instantly deal damage to the opponent and also generate a death effect, buffing Vulture. Spark can also be combined with Fractal due to its free cost. Gravity Pull is a creature control card that can be used offensively to pick off opposing creatures, or defensively in hiding behind Gravity's big tanky creatures to guarantee a creature's death. Ultimately, any card that either deals damage or causes poison to creatures can be used with Vulture.
Conclusion
Write a conclusion, then add one popular deck as "Popular Decks", and up to 3 other decks as "Other Decks".
Popular Deck
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