Pauper infect deck with an artifact theme.
Pauper offers a surprising number of strong, viable and synergistic cards for deck construction. I have always been interested in pauper and I am currently putting together a couple of unique decklists to play with friends.
I decided to make an infect list because of my ready access to many of its key pump spells but I also wanted to incorporate an artifact theme because it it my favorite type of permanent.
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--Creatures--
Glistener Elf is our obvious starting point and shouldn't warrant an explanation.
Ichorclaw Myr is our second set of creatures; a 2-drop artifact creature with infect adds to our theme and helps to enable affinity and metalcraft.
Rot Wolf
rounds off our creatures. It is a solid 2/2 body with the ability to help us sustain later turns with card draw.
--Artifacts--
Lotus Petal is a wonderful card at a wonderful rarity. It's a simple 0-drop artifact that allows us to easily ramp into larger creatures, add extra mana for more pump and to turn on our affinity and metalcraft spells.
Bone Saw
is a card that I feel fits in well with what we are trying to accomplish. It comes out on turn one and can be equipped cheaply. It also helps with our artifact count.
Tooth of Chiss-Goria is another quick pump to our creatures that can come out as early as turn one. It gives a creature +1/+0 and can be played at instant speed when needed.
--Pump--
Rancor is an pauper anomaly. A single green for +2/+0 and trample allows our guys to break through defenses and stack a few more counters on our opponent.
Groundswell
is useful for multi-land hands and provides an insane bump in power and toughness for the cost of a Giant Growth.
Mirran Mettle
plays off of our artifact theme; at its worst, it's a +2/+2 for 1, but we can get a lot of artifacts out early and fast, so it should usually be at its full strength.
Mutagenic Growth is a free +2/+2 pump that can be played for free. The 2 life cost shouldn't be too much of an issue since we're trying to end a game quickly.
Vines of Vastwood is our final pump spell and is at the end of our pump spell curve. It provides protection for creatures and can be kicked to get some extra damage in.
Apostle's Blessing is not so much a pump spell as it is major support. Our guys need to be able to connect with our opponents, and we can't really do that if they are getting chumped. For 1 colorless and 2 life, we can bypass some blockers and finish off our opponents.
--Lands--
Darksteel Citadel lets us activate our affinity and metalcraft spells, but can hinder us in some situations due to its lack of color.
Tree of Tales
is another artifact land that comes in untapped and adds to our artifact count. The colored mana is a plus.
Turntimber Grove
provides a +1/+1 pump to a creature when needed and has good synergy with Groundswell. Hopefully it will never be in our opening hands.
Forest because green mana.
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This deck, while playing well into our artifact theme, is obviously not as on-point as many people would like an infect decklist to be. I wanted to provide an alternative and fun take on how infect can be played and I hope that others enjoy playing it too.
If there are any concerns, questions, comments or, if you need me to explain why Glistener Elf is in here, I'd love to hear them!
Thanks!
