The Apprentice Workshop - Episode 4
The Apprentice's Workshop
KrazyCaley
7 October 2010
1371 views
Welcome
7 October 2010
1371 views
Welcome
Once again, welcome to the Apprentice Workshop, where I take a deck from the Newb list and tune it up as best I can, then throw it open to comments and critiques from the entire Tappedout community. In this way, we learn about deckbuilding, hopefully give the deckbuilder some good perspective on how to tune the deck up, and maybe even have some fun along the way, eh? High-five!
Today
We'll be looking at Infect Help Pls by obichan The decklist is as follows:
Instant (17)
4x Doom Blade
3x Groundswell
4x Naturalize
Land (22)
13x Forest
9x Swamp
Creature (17)
2x Blight Mamba
4x Corpse Cur
Artifact (4)
The deck's main idea
The idea here is clearly to kill your opponent with poison counters, hopefully withering away any resistance. To that end, we are employing green and black infect creatures, and a variety of instants to do various stuff. Let's have a look at those instants first.
Instants
Well, we have here two kinds of cards- temporary boosting, and answers. The answers are a bit troubling to me, so let's have a look: We've got Doom Blade and we've got Naturalize. Doom Blade I'm not a huge fan of given its limitations. Let's search out a better alternative. Now, we have a deck that wins via poison counters, and its creature set looks to be pretty small and fast. So what we need is a solution to clear out early blockers to push home our pump-spell aided blitz. I have just the card- Smother. Costs the same as Doom Blade, and I think its restriction is easier for this deck to deal with than Doom Blade's. We might also consider Grasp of Darkness, but I worry about having double black very early in the game. So let's just switch out all the DB's for Smothers.
Next we have Naturalize. This is here to presumably get us around any early obstacles that aren't creatures. Sadly, an essentially superior card, Maelstrom Pulse, just rotated, but let's see if there are any ways to improve on this.
I have two ideas on this front: One is Nature's Claim. This card is better in more or less every way for this deck, since life totals don't particularly matter for it. The other idea I have is Plummet. My thinking there is that early enchantments and artifacts are unlikely to stop us, whereas early creatures are unfortunate; we really need to push through our poison counters quick or else lose. So I prefer Plummet, which I will swap out for Naturalize, though Nature's Claim is also respectable.
Next, we have our pumping spells. They seem very well-chosen and, while you could quibble about them, I think the original choices are quite good, and about the same, quality-wise, as any other selection you could devise. However, I do believe that we have slightly too many, especially given that we are running VERY short on land (22). I'm going to cut a Groundswell and leave the slot open to add a land later.
Artifacts
4x Trigon of Rage. a- This requires red mana to really use with full effectiveness, which we don't have. b- We have LOTS of temporary pump already. c- We don't have enough creatures or lands yet. Scratched!
Creatures
Our selection here is already pretty good, but I see a few candidates for removal that could be replaced by superior cards. Birds of Paradise I don't like. Doesn't help us enough; we shouldn't have trouble fixing our mana in this deck, and we don't really NEED ramp too much given our curve. With birds, it's turn 1 birds, turn 2 creature, turn 3 attack with the creature and boost it. WithOUT Birds, it's turn 1 nothing, or answer an enemy threat if possible, turn 2 creature or answer an enemy threat, turn 3 attack with a boost, play a creature, etc. Birds just ramps us up into mana we don't particularly need. Birds = cut. We now have EIGHT tasty creature spots. First, let's bring our other creatures up to 4x each, except for Tel-Jilad Fallen, which is good, but a little slow to have 4x of. This leaves us with 6 spots. After carefully considering all the options, I believe that this deck mostly has the right idea- speed kills. There are a lot of cards we COULD put in here, like Hand of the Praetors, or Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, or what have you, that are expensive but get you lots of poison counters. Remember though, we only need 10. Ten poison counters and we win. The faster we get them, the better, and we're equipped to do LOTS of poison damage on turn 3, after we clear out early resistance on turn 1 and/or 2. The original choices are EXCELLENT for this purpose, Birds of Paradise aside.
That said, I think we should use four of our six remaining spots on a creature that well-deserves inclusion which wasn't in the original deck: Ichor Rats. Ichor Rats is nasty because, in addition to being a 2/1 infect, it of course directly hits the enemy with poison. This is extremely helpful, especially as a finisher when we stall out just a counter or two shy of winning. So in goes the Ichor Rats.
Anything else?
I have three spots floating around. One I want to use on a land. Two are wild cards. I can't think of any other creatures I want to add.
Equipment seems to me to be the most promising idea. We have our infect creatures, but we might need to mod them in order to push our damage through. Trailblazer's Boots is a tempting and fast option, though it might not always work. More reliable, though also much slower, is Whispersilk Cloak. Kitesail, believe it or not, might actually have a use here, especially if we decide on Plummet as an instant- gives the creature evasion AND gives it more infect. Also worthy of consideration, though I don't think it's the best choice because its benefits are too slow for us, is Infiltration Lens.
However, best of all, I think, is Bladed Pinions- Infect + First Strike = filthy. And also it gives us all the flying excellence that made Kitesail so important, including the synergy with Plummet. So I'm going with the Pinions, 2x.
If you went with Nature's Claim as an instant instead, I'd suggest either Trailblazer's Boots or Whispersilk Cloak, depending on how lucky you feel. Definitely one in the sideboard and one in the mainboard if you go that route.
Land
We have 13 Forests and 9 Swamps for a perilously low 22 land. I cut a Groundswell earlier to get us an extra land here (23 is pushing it, but given the aggressive curve, it should work out about right), so I'm adding a swamp for 13/10. Dual-lands are very much justified here- our deck is going to be faster than their deck and we don't care about our life too much, so we want Verdant Catacombs. It would be the most expensive card in the deck, but well worth it if we want the deck to be reliable. If one had the cash, go 11/8 on Forests and Swamps with four fetches, otherwise go with 13/10 on Forests and Swamps, and you'll still be fine most days.
So now we're done!
My recommended final decklist:
Instants (16):
2x Groundswell
4x Smother (or Grasp of Darkness ).
4x Plummet (or Nature's Claim ).
Creatures (19):
4x Ichor Rats
4x Blight Mamba
4x Corpse Cur
Artifacts (2):
Land (23):
11x Forest
8x Swamp
Total Cards: 60
Poison Counters: The taste sensation that's sweeping your face.
I cant understand the lack of Ichorclaw Myr . Its one of my favorite poisoners out there.
October 7, 2010 4:23 p.m.
I agree with both Ichorclaw Myr and Hand of the Praetors . Praetors does what you want Ichor Rats to do, only more and with no drawback vs. another infect deck (which I expect to see a LOT of). The Myr is cheaper than the rats, stronger, and semi-evasive. I see a lot of people choose to take the counter rather than lose a 3/3.
So, in goes Ichorclaw Myr and Hand of the Praetors , out go the rats and the fallen, imo. Cheaper overall, stronger, and no drawback.
As for the artifacts, Kitesail might be better than Bladed Pinions . I'd prefer the +1/+0 to first strike in a lot of situations. If Plummet is taking out flyers, there is no need for first strike.
My two cents!
October 7, 2010 9:12 p.m.
I saw some changes made which could have been done much better, with a little more thought.
To start with, this deck wins with poison, so you don't care about life total. Keeping a 2 mana removal spell means that you have less mana to pump on turn 3... I would swap that out for vendetta... At turn 3/4, you are maybe losing 2 or 3 life... more than a fair trade for the ability to keep mana for pump or other removal.
If you are going with plummet, smother is a better choice if you put in vendetta for the first removal. At the same cost, and it is not restricted to fliers. If they don't have early fliers, plummet is a dead card in your hand. Given how many usable artifacts/enchantments there are in standard now, I would sideboard the nature's claim.
I would also consider cutting 2 corpse curs and 1 tel-jillad for 3 skythiryx(and yes, I know I probably spelled it wrong). 4/4 infect flier with regen(and possibly haste) for 5, is better than a 3/1 for 4(even with pro artifact) or 2/2 with creature return. At that point there the 2 corpse curs have decent targets to bring back(skythiryx).
Didn't go through the other choice in the same detail, but those were the details that jumped out at me from a quick skim through.
October 8, 2010 11:57 a.m.
djdauenbaugh says... #5
Don't play infect decks very often, but quick question, isn't trample way better than first strike in an infect deck? Would a Vitality Charm or a Seedling Charm be better for an infect deck?
Kaythal says... #1
This is a long comment and analysis. I removed all the "in my opinion" comments to shorten it, but read as if they were there: i'm probably wrong in some points. Also forgive me for all the typos.
I disagree with your statement "Infect + First Strike = filthy". I'd say "Infect + First Strike = filthy if you're a 2/2 or a 2/3". A 1/1 first strike usually dies in a fight regardless if it has infect or not. For a tougher creature having both abilities is huge. For example a Cystbearer with first strike can survive a battle with a Kuldotha Phoenix on its own. This said I don't think Bladed Pinions would be my choice for this deck. They would be good only on Corpse Cur , or, in other words, after 5th turn. On the other side, I'm a fun of Trigon of Rage because I won my last draft with it in my poison deck. I had some proliferate (that we don't have in this deck), but even without proliferate this is a +9/+0, we don't need anymore! Still, it might be too slow for constructed, so we better leave it.
Let's analyze the creatures. The Cystbearer just mentioned would be the only 3-drop of the deck, which is good for the "pure" mana curve, but this doesn't consider that at 3rd turn we are probably also using a growth instant. The decision about putting or not the Cystbearer requires testing, and I won't pronounce about it. Another card that would need testing is the cited Hand of the Praetors . That is really good firstly for the +1/+1, even if playing it before attacking would prevent a fake at 4th turn. Furthermore, if it is not instantly removed, a poison per turn is awesome. In any case Hand of the Praetors is surely better than Tel-Jilad Fallen so let's swap em. On the other hand, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon is too slow and costy for this deck. The (in-)famous Ichorclaw Myr is although shining for its absence. This little boy is absolutely badass and outshines the Blight Mamba by hundreds. Personally I wouldn't smash the mamba on a defending bear if that would mean skipping my 3rd turn drop, while I would love to fiercely attack with my myr. The mamba surely has its own pros: it's not an artifact and can survive a pyroclasm (if you have the mana); these considerations are although typical of a conservative play: heck, we're poisoning people, not playing with dolls.
Instants time now. I consider Giant Growth surely better than card:Prey's Vengeance and probably better than Groundswell too. I really liked the Plummet idea, even if being able to break a metalcraft could be handy.
My deck would then look as follows Kaythal poisons
Hope the wall of text didn't crit you for too much!
October 7, 2010 10:22 a.m.