So this is infect a deck that most of you played already against in your career as a magic player, but probably not in this configuration and/or color combination.
(sorry, i had to get that in there...it just came to my mind an it was blown) :D
For real though, Infect is a competitve choice to make, when looking at modern (even in legacy) and wishing to be an explosive deck, winning with creatures as big as they can get. That said, Infect is a deck that needs to be played a lot to know your deck in and out, because it is in my opinion one of the more complex decks and by any means not easy to pilot. Especially the right sequencing of spells/abilities before and inside combat is vital for the deck, as well as the timing when exactly to strike with full force and whento apply only some soft jabs to test the defense.
If you are looking for an explosive deck, that needs you to conentrate on your sequencing, a deck that wants you to be as conserving with your recources as you can be and a deck that doesnt care if you loose some life because your oppoenent is always virtually at 10 you might want to try to build an Infect deck.
What do we work with in this deck?
We are in the Temur colors, meaning and thus we have access to many fast and hard hitting spells which we will sling at our opponent to win within the first 3-5 turns of the game. We facilitate this through small, cheap creatures with Infect and make them big enough to deal the 10 Poison in one or two swings.
This is how we do it:
Foster the Sickness
In this first block i will get into the creatures chosen and why i think they deserve a spot in here/are necessary for the plan of the deck.
Infect doesnt really play many creatures, though we do have more than usual here in the deck. There are some, whose only purpose here is the keyword Infect, others that smoothe out our mana and buff and the 3rd category is purely to savagely beat our opponent to a pulp with or without Infect.
Glistener Elf and
Blighted Agent, also
Inkmoth Nexus
I dont think im telling anyone groundbreaking news here...
They are really the only choices for Infect creatures to run in my opinion. Since you decided to play Infect, thus practically half your opponents life from the start you dont want to waste time with slow creatures with CMC 3 or more. Inkmoth Nexus has the built in advantage of being a land and can only be removed by Instant spells your opponents cast and even then only if the spell doesnt target "nonland permanents". However that doesnt mean you should swing in with them lightly and without a back-up plan, since they are often your most valuable sorce of infect, since it also has evasion.
We also kept to the proven receipe with a playset of
Noble Hierarch despite him beeing so damn expensive, but his
Exalted triggers and his ramp ability can get you to the 10 Poison so much faster that there is just no other creature you could swap in for.
In any normal
Infect deck, the list of creatures would most likely be over by now, but not here. We also run 3
Ghor-Clan Rampager because he proved soooo effective in bringing the pain to my opponents.
Almost all the time we use his
Bloodrush ability. Discarding him and paying
to give a creature +4/+4
and Trample is a great ratio in itself for what we get, the important part being the
Trample obviously, since getting chump blocked by small creatures really isnt what you would like to do. But the
Bloodrush also has the benefit that it cant be countered (you dont cast it) and has a neat little interaction with another of our pump spells that i will get to later. Lastly, with a CMC of
opponents cant target it with
Inquisition of Kozilek. A minor bonus point, but it is one nontheless. It is in itself a 4/4
Trample so even if we run into a
Melira, Sylvok Outcast or a
Spellskite it is big enough to demand an answer from our opponent if we hard cast it. Left alone with an
Exalted trigger or two, it can make short work of our opponents life total on it's own.
Experimental Soldier Enhancement
So on the noncreature spells, to make our little soldiers into tremendous beasts.
Your creatures are small and unimpressive. Fact.
It is your job to make them bigger and more resistent by any means so as to present a sizeable clock your opponent cant race with, while being hard enough to not be removed by the first measly Terminate flying your way. Green offers us a plethora of options to choose from, and often the exact list of spells you bring can vary on your own taste, but this has worked for me so far:
Some people like to max out on Groundswell and/or Mutagenic Growth and include Might of Old Krosa in their lists. I dont think their completely wrong. I just think that the Ghor-Clan Rampager gives us an advantage, the aforementioned spells do not give you. The first being, that the pump cant be countered, the second being that he can also be hardcast in a pinch to give you more play lategame as well as being a threat that does not instantly die to Pyroclasm/Lightning Bolt/Searing Blaze...
I often hear, that players only have 2 Become Immense mainboard and that they struggle with casting the second each game for only , but in this deck i sometimes even cast two in 1 turn, thanks to a spell in the last categorie of this section.
A neat interaction between Become Immense
+
Ghor-Clan Rampager
is, that if you've bloodrushed your Rampager first it is already in your graveyard while the pump is on the stack. If your opponent now wants to respond with let's say a Lightning Bolt to kill of your creature before the pump happens, you can use him as the 5th card to Delve and thus play the Become Immense as your response for only , saving your dude and getting at least 11 power of Infect damage...gg. This can happen as soon as turn 3.
Obviously the biggest creature doesnt do anything if it cant connect to our opponent...to get through, we pack some spells that give us the evasiveness needed:
Yes, Apostle's Blessing can be a great option on the offense as well, when you can be sure that we wont need it otherwise (e.g.after you probed your opponent) and the ground is too shored up by creatures. Just use it to give Protection from the color of opposing blockers and swing the heck in! Of course you can as well use it as usual to save your creature from a kill spell.
In the first version i made, i had 2 Artful Dodge but now i opted for a split with the new Slip Through Space because i think the option to draw a card i a great benefit to have at certain situations in the game. You can smoothe out an inferior draw with it relatively easy.
I kept the other Artful Dodge however, since we have a red spell in the next categorie, that uses it to great effect.
Often you will not have the nuts draw in your first turns or know if you can just safely vomit out every pump spell imaginable by you opponent and get in with a 20/21
Trample,
Infect,
Unblockable...
If you did , everyone would play Infect.
To filter effectively and get a bit of information on our opponent, we run a number of support spells in this deck:
Apostle's Blessing...do i need to go over this?
The Probes are a must have in my opinion, getting you a new card and perfect information about the opponents hand for the small cost of 2 life, which we can almost always pay without even thinking about it. We are the aggressor, we race them, not the other way, we can spare life.
To know wether or not you can get off in a specific turn without getting blown out...that again is priceless information.
The Faithless Looting are the last cards of the red splash but not the least. Discarding unwanted lands and keeping gas makes players hapy since ... Dark Ascension. It also has great synergy with Artful Dodge and Become Immense. The former of both can be discarded without really loosing a card thanks to Flashback, the later getting cheaper with every card we discard fueling Delve to maximum potential.
Fat of the Land
Our deck functions perfectly with 2-3 lands, hence we dont need many in the deck. 19 is enough for us.
They comprise of 2 categories:
3 Inkmoth Nexus basically Infect creature 9-11
3 Pendelhaven produces our main color and pumps all our Infect creatures, since they are all 1/1
The Sideboard
The Sideboard consists of mostly pretty standard sideboard cards for Infect decks, such as 3 Spell Pierce and 2 Wild Defiance and 3 Natural State as our artifact/enchantment removal of choice, but we also have a number of cards that arent seen often (never) in Infect Sideboards
I hope i could bring you to like this deck a bit and if anything just interest you in the overall strategy of it/Infect in general.
If you have questions, critique, ... please let me know in the comment section.
