Hey, what do you know, I'm back. It's probably not a good thing that writing that brings to mind Joe Gideon's, “It's show time folks.” I had a topic and already lost it didn't I? Oh, right. We've all been playing with New Phyrexia long enough to see the weird ways it messes with our precious Magic, with its anti-landfall, and Torpor Orb weirdness, and of course Phyrexian mana, but there is one topic I haven't seen brought up much since the spoilers hit. Infect has seeped out of black and green and into all the other colors. Now, I love infect; it's different, it's speedy, and you still get to take creatures, and it's just plain mean.
Now I have made infect decks before, specifically a blue black deck that is more about getting in a few good hits and proliferating the poor sucker to death. Now this works fine but to me, it's just not fast enough. So when I saw that there was a one drop infector, I did a happy dance that quite frightened the residents of my local card shop. I knew from the beginning my deck would at least be green and red since I wanted to have four Glistener Elves, the one drop green infectors, and four Fallen Ferromancers, infectors who can ping for one and a red. From there the deck just took off. I pulled two Phyrexian Swarmlords, which were immediately thrown into the small pile that was becoming my new deck. Then I realized there are not enough red infectors. The ones I found are awesome, but they're not beefy enough. So that led me accidentally into white infecty goodness.
With white added in the deck really began to take shape with some simple two cost Lost Leonin, and some very effective air support in the shape of Shriek Raptors. I did consider Tine Shrike, but I have a problem with creatures who die to a slight breeze. To add some nice buffing to the deck I also added in an Urabrask, The Hidden and a Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger. Who doesn't like hasty infect and more mana?
Once the creature base was more fleshed out it obviously needed some real spells. I knew from the beginning some Giant Growths were going in (to mourn their passing from the Core Set) plus one or Two triumph of the Hordes for the final assault. I wanted to get in some Volt Charges for sweet targeted removal and proliferating double duty. After that I went on a hunt for some enchantments that would work great with infect creatures and boy did I find some. Oddly deep in a pile of cards I dug up two gems, Electropotence and Mayael's Aria. Electropotence lets me effectively attack with each creature I play the turn it is summoned (and yep, it's the creature that does the damage). Mayael's Aria, on the other hand, seems like a weird fit. It lets me put +1/+1 counters on all my creatures if I have a creature with 5 power or more. In the current deck that means Vorinclex. It also lets me get ten life each turn or maybe even win the game, but if either of these happen something is going wrong.
So after round one of frantic construction, the deck looked something like this.
Creatures (27)
4x Glistener Elf
4x Lost Leonin
2x Priests of Norn
2x Razor Swine
2x Rot Wolf
1x Blightwidow
4x Fallen Ferromancer
2x Tangle Angler
2x Shriek Raptor
1x Urabrask the Hidden
2x Phyrexian Swarmlord
1x Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
Spells (10)
2x Giant Growth
2x Choking Fumes
1x Electropotence
1x Mayael's Aria
2x Volt Chrage
2x Triumph of the Hordes
Lands (24)
3x Evolving Wilds
7x Forests
5x Mountains
5x Plains
1x Gruul Turf
1x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Krosan Verge
1x Naya Panorama
Now this first version of the deck was fast, really fast, but it couldn't survive mulligans all the time. They were often necessary because if the first hand doesn't start out with a Glistener Elf and a Forest, my opponent has enough time to get out a few blockers. The other problem with the deck is that Vorinclex is basically useless. Ideally the game should be over by the time I can even bring him out. There's a good chance I'll be top decking by the time I can cast him anyway, so that extra mana is not too useful. The problem with removing him from the deck makes Mayael's Aria pretty much useless, not that is all that useful when I don't want to cast Vorinclex anyway.
I rather like my solution; I removed Vorinclex and replaced him with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. She turns almost every one of my bigger creatures into fuel to power Mayael's Aria. I also replaced one Ferromancer with a Grafted Exoskeleton to turn Elesh Norn or Urabrask into a buffed up infector, and more enchantment fuel if I don't have anything else hitting five power. My final addition was to cut the Lost Leonin by two and replace them with Viridian Emissaries to speed up my mana curve at best, and at worst remove potential land draws. So the final deck list ends up like this, drum roll please.
Creatures (26)
4x Glistener Elf
2x Lost Leonin
2x Viridian Emissary
2x Priests of Norn
2x Razor Swine
2x Rot Wolf
1x Blightwidow
3x Fallen Ferromancer
2x Tangle Angler
2x Shriek Raptor
1x Urabrask the Hidden
2x Phyrexian Swarmlord
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Spells: 11
2x Giant Growth
2x Choking Fumes
1x Electropotence
1x Mayael's Aria
2x Volt Charge
1x Grafted Exoskeleton
2x Triumph of the Hordes
Lands: 24
3x Evolving Wilds
7x Forests
5x Mountains
5x Plains
1x Gruul Turf
1x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Krosan Verge
1x Naya Panorama
With these slight changes it is much more prepared to go aggressive in the early game and keep on creature control in the mid-game and hopefully finish before we hit late game. The only problem is still card draw. If the game goes a bit to long then I run out of cards and have to top deck. The only current solution is in the Rot Wolves. Obviously, this is still a work in progress; I'm considering adding in some Tezzeret's Gambits, but I at the moment I don't see anything that isn't playing its part.
This deck, despite its shortcomings, really embraces a Naya and green style battle; hit fast and hard, no sneaky evasion or tricks, big creatures and a lot of them. It actually plays very differently in multiplayer. It works more like a pumping white weenie deck and the Phyrexian Swarmlords and Elesh Norn really come into their own here. Instead of smashing enemies it's more about getting in for a few poison on everyone then getting the two Swarmlords out and Elesh Norn so you can bulldoze everyone under waves of 3/3 infecting insects.
This is one of my favorite decks right now; I just wish I had a replacement for the Aria and my older lands so I could use it at FNM. Since that's probably not going to happen, I think my next deck is going to be decidedly not Standard and purposefully mean.
So, until then goodbye. Also, it's probably not good that the only thing I can think of now is Joe Gideon's “Bye Bye Life.” I may have a problem.
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