MELIRA POD.
The Engine
Birthing Pod. Using this, I can trade a creature up for a slightly better creature and capitalize on the effects I need to handle the boardstate at hand. But that's not all.
Melira, Sylvok Outcast: Now, this card has an obvious hatred towards infect that can give you a pretty easy win if you end up going against a deck running it. But, it also works well with Persist. Persist states that a creature returns to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter when it dies. The way that works is the creature enters the battlefield, and then the counter is placed, making Melira great at making these creatures immortal.
The strategy
Kitchen Finks and Murderous Redcap go infinite when Melira is out and you sac them to Viscera Seer. Once that happens, you either win from having infinite life (conceded victory) or your opponent having zero life.
But, you don't have to go infinite to win. Trade up cards until your board is pretty full of great utility cards. It will usually go something like this if you're forced to take this route:
- Birds of Paradise into Melira, Sylvok Outcast.
- Birds of Paradise into Spellskite into Kitchen Finks into Ranger of Eos into Reveillark
- Reveillark hits the field, grabbing you your Birds and Spellskite back, throwing them onto the field, and because of Ranger, you now have 2 1 drops in your hand to play whenever you have the open mana (You should on the turn Reveillark hits since you're using Birthing Pod to grab it.)
Your board now looks like this:
And even then, if your opponent is threatening enough, and you can't beat them down too easily with your 4/3 Reveillark, you should have Viscera Seer out so you can go infinite when in a pinch.
Everything there in the deck is there to give you options to best deal with your opponent.
Sideboard
The sideboard is so you can tune your deck to best combat other decks. Most of it is obvious but these are noteworthy:
Thoughtseize is there to shut down combo decks (In the mirror match and against Kiki-Exarch-Twin and any variation of that.)
Voice of Resurgence is for control. Honestly, there's no better card to deal with control. Especially since you can't counter a card placed onto the battlefield with Birthing Pod, this card becomes one hell of a beast for control to deal with.
Aven Mindcensor comes in against the mirror match. What good is Pod if you can't search your entire deck?
