A few years back I noticed that my modern low-powered cube had a high count of vampires supporting various archetypes, and decided to introduce vampires as its own archetype by adding a few tribal payoffs. Here are some of my thoughts and experiences on integrating the tribe into my cube environment.

Concept
Instead of vampire creatures supporting broader themes (lifegain, counters, madness, sacrifice) the vampire archetype amasses the same vampires but uses tribal payoffs for synergy.

What Works

Vampire lords with reasonable base stats and a tribal “boon” that applies to themselves like vampire nocturnus, indulgent aristocrat and kalastria highborn. Notably each requires some maneuvering to be effective, and can generate good value with just 1 other vampire on the battlefield.

“Minor Boons”. Cards that work without any other vampires at all, but can get some incremental value if you have vampires around. Examples include gift of fangs, urge to feed, blade of the bloodchief, falkenrath pit gorger and stromkirk bloodthief. Cards like these are excellent for signalling to the drafter that vampires are a thing they can pursue, without dedicating too many slots to “vampire deck exclusive” payoffs.

What Doesn’t Work

“Anthem lords”. Cards like stromkirk captain, captivating vampire and markov baron tend to be feast or famine - you either draft the nut vampire deck and consistently have 3 vampires on the battlefield to make these guys pop, or you dont and have to try and get there with scathe zombies. Anthem lords are largely responsible for the perception that tribal archetypes suck in cube. They are swingy, and they don’t introduce especially interesting decisions.

White vampires. There aren’t that many to choose from, so you have to add cards you might not otherwise want to just to get critical mass. The third colour also fragments the draft since white players may now attempt to get into the archetype - spreading it thinner and reducing the likelihood of monoblack materializing. While I really like Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle as a vampire lord, I think it's best to not have 3 colours for vampires, and red works much better as the complimentary colour to black.

One sided wraths. Some medium-looking cards are still too powerful for a board-centric low powered cube where removal is clunky and/or at a premium. Examples include anwon, the ruin sage and vampire’s vengeance. Amazing vampire payoffs, but just too strong at what they do.

What Kind of Works

Red vampires - specifically the “saboteur” ones that get counters when you damage an opponent. I like this effect, especially with the madness of bloodmad vampire, the sacrifice payoff of havengul vampire, the counter synergy of falkenrath exterminator or the aggro side of stromkirk noble. I’m less happy with it when one hit snowballs out of control like falkenrath marauders and markov blademaster, and I’ve been relatively underwhelmed with it as a lord effect. I’ve tried rakish heir and stensia masquerade but both seemed to be really swingy in effect. Sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they snowball out of control quickly.

Blood tokens. I hate these thematically but love them mechanically. They go with discard and sacrifice themes that vampires can already contribute to which is great. Unfortunately most of them have very medium stats, or specifically call out blood tokens for their effects when the cube won’t realistically have more than a few sources of blood tokens. I wish these had been balanced around “sacrificing a permanent” in more cases, with the blood token representing a single baked in trigger for the vampire.

Conclusion
Vampires provide a lot of relevant text for various broad archetypes or themes in cube, and with just a handful of interesting lords and minor boons you can introduce a full fledged archetype out of cards that may have mostly already been there anyways.