Phyrexian Crusader
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Phyrexian Crusader

Creature — Phyrexian Zombie Knight

First strike, protection from red and from white ((Remember the acronym debt.) This can't be damaged, enchanted, equipped, blocked or targeted by anything red or white. Anything red or white attached to this immediately falls off.)

Infect (This creature deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters.)

to_regatha_and_beyond on Art-Infect

1 year ago

Infect decks usually tend to be a lot more aggressive. Maybe add another Blighted Agent and 3 more Phyrexian Crusaders as those are your aggressive plays here? Make sure to get a playset of Glistener Elfs as those tend to end up doing a bunch of poison damage over the course of the game. I think you could add those in instead of Season of Growth, Square Up, Coretapper, and Myr Reservoir. Those all slow down your game, and Coretapper esoecially tends to do nothing at all.

wallisface on Bant Infect

1 year ago

This link here is an example of what current modern infect decks look like. Specifically, the deck aims to win the game as fast as possible, ideally on turns 2 or 3. The deck doesn't want the game to go long because that will most-certainly mean defeat.

Added to the above, even non-aggressive modern decks still generally don't want to be playing more than 3-4 cards costing 4-mana, with nothing above this cost (you've got a whopping 20 cards costing 4-or-more, which will cause your deck to be miserably slow). Modern infect decks typcically don't want to play anything costing more than 2-mana (Though some more recent decks have been playing Phyrexian Crusader to help versus some matchups).

So, firstly I'd strongly suggest ditching all your slow and sluggish cards - all of Core Prowler, Evolution Sage, Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, Ajani, Sleeper Agent, Tamiyo, Compleated Sage, and Fuel for the Cause, Brokers Ascendancy, Hadana's Climb  Flip, Inexorable Tide, and Oath of Teferi. All of these cards are faaaar too slow and will just give your opponent too much time to get a stable boardstate and lock you out of the game. I would also suggest ditching Unbounded Potential, just because it's a weak spell, and adding a 3rd colour just needlessly complicates what you're doing given your awkward landbase (if you play just 2 colours you can probably just run basics and not slow yourself down running taplands).

Cards to consider adding in include Become Immense, Vines of Vastwood, Mutagenic Growth, Might of Old Krosa, Blossoming Defense, Distortion Strike, Scale Up, and Rancor. When playtesting your deck, you want to be aiming to reliably deal 10 infect within the first 2-3 turns.

wallisface on Merchant of Death (Modern Mono-Black)

2 years ago

StoryArcher to answer your specific questions:

  • Phyrexian Crusader would be a very odd sideboard choice. I think your sideboard in general needs a lot of work, over half of it is just graveyard hate which feels really excessive. I think you need to diversify your sideboard to better cope with devotions numerous bad matchups. Specifically, you have no answer for Torpor Orb, and very little to do versus control decks. Combo decks are also likely to give you grief. And you probably want some cards to help you versus burn. At the moment the sideboard feels really lacking.

  • Cry of the Carnarium is a fine card, but really it should only exist in the sideboard. Its only real purpose will be to cope with Mirran Crusader when you’re playing against taxes.

  • Bad Moon doesn’t offer you anything particularly special (trying to race aggro feels like a bad plan?), but Blood Moon should defo be an auto-include as 2-of in the sideboard - all the more established black-devotion decks i’ve seen seem to be including these to have a fighting chance versus a lot of the greedier meta.

  • Withered Wretch is probably a fine alternate to Relic, though might be a bit slow. Most of the time shutting down a graveyard deck equals an easy win anyway, so i think you just want Relic as its faster. In any case, as mentioned before, 8 grave-hate cards in the sideboard is overkill, unless your meta is entirely dredge.

On the Sign in Blood topic, the issue with it is that it often consumes valuable devotion points. Playing it turn-2 gives you nothing (board-state-wise), and nobody wants to be playing a single 1cmc creature on turn-3. Playing it will almost always put your opponent ahead in board state, and as you’re effectively a sorcery-speed-creature-deck, having a full hand isn’t particularly helpful for securing a win.

StoryArcher on Merchant of Death (Modern Mono-Black)

2 years ago

wallisface

Any thoughts about the various quandaries I'm entertaining above? Does Phyrexian Crusader warrant inclusion in the sideboard? Is Cry of the Carnarium the best use of that lone card slot? Is Bad Moon worthy of serious consideration? How much will a lack of land destruction ultimately hurt me? Is Withered Wretch a better option than Relic of Progenitus om this particular deck?

memdem on Infect

2 years ago

One thing I would recommend is cutting 1 Dread Presence and 1 Deathgazer for a playset of Phyrexian Crusader as that Is a very powerfull card.

Another thing you could do is splashing green for explosive T2 wins If you have the right hands. Combo: Glistener Elf T1 then Invigorate (for free) then Scale Up Then since your Glistener Elf has infect you one shot them.

Have fun with infect, It is a up and down archetype.

wallisface on

2 years ago

Phyrexian Crusader just seems to “exist” here… there doesn’t appear to be any synergy with it and the rest of your deck, outside of maybe Lashwrithe (which feels meh/slow). It would have been cool to see the likes of Puresteel Paladin here so that you could make the Crusader an absolute beast (it would also let you run the Hammer, which is going to generally be a much stronger choice than Lashwrithe)

^ note the above suggestion would also require some rejigging to have enough artifacts for Puresteel Paladin to do its thing. But i think having a strategy where Phyrexian Crusader has some synergy with the deck will work out a lot better than just stapling him onto a brew that doesn’t need him

wallisface on Lighting-fast Mono-Green Infect

2 years ago

Some thoughts:

cyeRunner on BG Infect

2 years ago

Welcome to the Infect-Team :)

The Deck that top 8'd was targeting certain matchups anticipated at the event as you can see in the sideboard, so maybe you might not do as well with the list at your local meta:
7x Graveyard-hate, 7x Artifact- & Entchantment-hate in the Sideboard against Hammertime, Affinity, Amulet Titan and Chalice of the Void with 1 Counter. Ashiok, Dream Render is also good against Titan, but there is no Creature Removal and Lifegain against Burn is missing.

Abrupt Decay vs. Assassin's Trophy: Giving your Opponnent a land-card is currently a huge disadvantage so I would not play too many Trophy's or only in certain Matchups. Decay is a good card, it hits most of the stuff you need to hit, including Wrenn and Six, but excluding Urza's Saga which leads us to ..

Gemrazer! This card has some big advantages over other Disenchant-Effects. Sideboard cards can sometimes be "dead draws", meaning the situation you brought them in has not occoured, so the sideboard card is useless in your hand. Gemrazer can still be played as a Rancor-like effect: "Give your Creatures +3/+3 and trample" for 3 mana is quite good even if you don't use the "Destroy artifact or enchantment"-effect. If you get both you 2for1 your opponent. Also it hits Urza's Saga. Even in the worst case it's a 4-Mana 4/4.

For removal Fatal Push is currently sufficient in my opinion, but I recommend having a sideboard removal-card against bigger creatures like Murktide Regent, Serra's Emissary or Archon of Cruelty.

Generally speaking about Thoughtseize: the obvious reason to run it is to disrupt your opponents hand, but the not so obvious reason is that you are more likely to have something to do on turn 1. 8x 1-drops (Hierarchs and G-Elf) are sometimes not enough to consistently draw one in your opening 7 cards. There were times before Ignoble Hierarch where UG-Infect would run a single Birds of Paradise for more consistent draws. If you have a lot of burn/aggro decks in your local meta swap it for Inquisition of Kozilek.

Phyrexian Crusader is currently a powerhouse since most removal is red or white in the current meta. You are right: Blighted Agent is a lot better than Plague Stinger with a lot of fliers flying around, but the 3 color manabase is just superhard to play.

My prefered budget Replacement for Endurance is Nihil Spellbomb since it can draw you cards. (The effect even triggers if your opponent wants to destroy it)

I am playing BG Infect for ~2,5 years now, if you are interested here is my list: Nobody expects the Kozileks Inqusition - BG Infect

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