I've never played Infect. I've never played against Infect. That may be apparent soon.
Yesterday for the first time ever I was actually killed with Poison counters. I actually would have been able to win the game had this not happened, but then out of nowhere my opponent activated their Inkmoth Nexus, threw a bunch of Equipment on it, and hit me over the head with 10 Infect damage. This was a Commander game and my opponent was playing Eldrazi and I was playing a Ramp/Landfall deck that got around Annihilator because I could get my lands back from the graveyard multiple ways and I had more than enough blockers to throw in front of the Eldrazi to where I really wasn't taking damage. It actually helped give me more triggers.
This shenanigan that ended a nearly hour and a half game got me pretty upset. So, I did what most people would do in that situation and decided to try building a deck around that very mechanic. I haven't yet looked at what the top decks are doing, but Glistener Elf, Inkmoth Nexus, Mutagenic Growth, and and
Become Immense
I am familiar with as being sort of staples for this sort of deck. I think a lot of these are probably mono green or even green with blue for that unblockable guy with infect, but I liked the options available in black.
Ichor Rats and Hand of the Praetors seemed good as ways to guarantee poison counters. In testing,
Mycosynth Fiend
proved to be a big deal, potentially. This is especially true since when my group does play Modern, it usually involves 3-6 people as opposed to duels. I didn't want to muck around with slow mana dual lands so I just went with Mana Confluence and called it a day. So far I haven't been stuck with the wrong colors to do stuff, but there are a few double mana symbols that I could see myself not able to use on occasion. It happens.
I also thought that Rancor was a nice touch if it isn't already used because my understanding is that these little infectious creatures don't live very long and the extra damage and trample seemed good. It does sort of work against
Become Immense
as you would have less things to Delve, but again it hasn't appeared to be an issue so far. I'm wondering if the Delirium cards from Shadows or similar cards that fill up a graveyard good and quick would be worthy here for that very reason to be able to cast Become Immense sooner, but I'd need fewer creatures and more copies of Immense to make that work. There may be something to that, Commune with the Gods seems good. I also like Grisly Salvage. In fact, I think I'll give Grisly Salvage a try.
Another card that I liked that I don't feel is all that popular for this deck is
Virulent Wound
. Since damage is dealt to creatures with -1/-1 counters, this can be used to finish off a creature and push a poison counter through. The magic number is only ten so it seemed like a decent option. It can also pick off early Elves and Goblins which seemed good to me as well.
Plague Stinger
and
Plague Myr
round out the creature options. The Myr gives you a little ramp if found early and still counts as a trigger for the Praetors if you get it later. I like the Stinger because it has Flying. Again, it just seemed good. I have a friend that plays a brutal Treefolk deck that spreads like weeds every single upkeep every single game. It's retarded. They get so wide and so tall it's very hard to score a kill once a game goes so many turns. They have Indestructible and he can gain a crap-ton on life, it's just stupid. Well, as tall as these trees are I could definitely squeak out a quick win in the air with the Nexus and Stingers because he doesn't actually have Reach. Again, seems good and when we actually play this format that deck is always a part of it so I have to be ready.
The sideboard is full of the bigger Infect creatures that you would never see Mainboard I imagine. They just cost too much and you need to try to win faster. This is for when we play those bigger table games and I might have more time to get the other things out. We also do Two-Headed Giant a lot and sometimes in Modern so those bigger cards would be nice to get around some of the crazy defenses that usually come about. I really like
Pistus Strike
as a kill card that gives out a free counter, too bad it has to hit a flyer or that would have been in the Main.
Spinebiter
is absolutely a finisher. That guy is nuts. If you can afford him and live to attack that is.
That does it, my take on Infect. I don't know what else to do other than ditching black and adding more pump, which is probably what the people that play this for real do. I like this build though and will give it a try with my playgroup and see what happens. I suspect this isn't good enough for FNM, but it's a whole new territory for us.
Thanks for reading, let me know what you might do different. I'm open to suggestions here :)
