Post Rotation Decks Episode 1: The Obligitory Infect Deck

Hey Hey Hey!

This is the happiest time of the year, when children can wake up, look under their beds, and see the gleaming Scars of Mirroden booster packs under their bed softly whispering "build decks with me, build decks with me." Ok, maybe not til friday. But hey, it's always nice to imagine.

This is the start of what is probably an incredibly short series where I spend an entire article talking about a deck I don't have. Today is the easy day in terms of coming up with an idea, and I will make an infect deck.

Infect, or phyrexia as a whole, is in the "snake colors" of green, black, and blue. There are 6 green and 6 black creatures with Infect (if you count Carrion Call towards a creature). However, adding blue would provide card advantage and more proliferate spells. If you want to see a BUG infect deck, there was one posted on The Professors on BlackBorder.com. I am not sold on using blue and here's why:

"However, adding blue would provide card advantage and more proliferate spells." <--While I did just say that, I am going to counter that statement before it can resolve with this:

Infiltration Lens is the new Skullclamp, especially in an infect deck. It already sucks to get hit by an infect creature, because they kill you twice as fast and there's no way to eliminate poison counters. But it sucks even worse when you have to choose between getting poisoned and giving your opponent insane card advantage while permanently crippling your creature, assuming they live.

Also, in terms of proliferating, there are only 6 proliferate cards, 3 of which are blue, and the other 3 are colorless artifacts. Theres no need to splash if you don't have to, and Contagion Clasp does the trick unless you have a low enough curve to support Contagion Engine. Throne of Geth sucks...

So basically there's no need for blue in our deck. Also, I feel that black is much stronger than green when it comes to infect cards. Black has Skithryx (which I fully agree is insanely good after seeing how awesome infect is in action) and Hand of the Praetors, which can cause you to win games without even attacking. So I will build a Black/Green infect deck and a mono-black version (of course I say that, and today's daily deck list is a mono-green infect deck http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/deck/548 Check that out if you want to see a cool mono-green list).

Black Green Infect
4x Hand of the Praetors
3x Skithryx, the Blight Dragon
3x Putrefax
4x Blight Mamba
4x Corpse Cur
4x Ichorclaw Myr
3x Tangle Angler

4x Infiltration Lens
1x Contagion Engine
4x Vines of the Vastwood
4x Doom Blade

4x Verdant Catacombs
10x Forest
8x Swamp

I was actually suprised after building this that theres more green than black, but then again, it does make sense. While Hand and Skithryx may be practically essential, Vines of the Vastwood is a champ in this deck. It can protect your guys if need be, but it can also kill your opponent from out of nowhere. Attack with Ichorclaw Myr? Ok, I can go to 6 poison counters, oh wait nevermind, that's game over.

Here's the mono-black version:

4x Hand of the Praetors
3x Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
2x Ichor Rats
4x Ichorclaw Myr
4x Corpse Cur
4x Plague Stinger
3x Contagious Nim

4x Doom Blade
4x Grasp of Darkness
4x Sign in Blood
2x Infiltration Lens

22x Swamp

I think the green/black version is probably better than what the mono-back version can produce, but the mono-black version does provide more evasion and removal, so it's not a strict better/worse.

Anyways, I have other decks I am brewing in my head that I just can't wait to materialize, so I am going to go for now, and either later tonight or tomorrow, I should have my next deck(s) posted around the equipment theme!