Modern Infect (21.07.2016)
Intro
Hey guys I just wanted to present you the most common infect list in modern right now. First of all I'm not a pro player, just some guy that plays MTG for fun with friends and FNM. (I would like to apologize for bad english grammar or wrong spelled words. It's not my native language )
Basics
So what's infect all about? Infect is in my opinion the best combo deck in modern right now. So Infect is known as a combo deck but it can also play like an aggro deck by having a fast clock than your opponent with your infect threads.What i mean by this is that infect is capable of one shotting the opponent with your pump spells and the infect mechanic but also can just attack them for 2 infect damage each turn.
Decklist
Creatures:
- Glistener Elf: This creature is your ideal one-drop when on the play. On the draw it's more vulnerable to removal than on the play but it's also "ok" on the draw. You have to consider that your elf is probably gonna die in your opponents first or second turn. So when you play Glistener Elf on the draw you should have some backup threads in your hand.
- Noble Hierarch: This one is the mana accelerator in the deck. It's optimal to deploy this creature on the first turn when on the draw. On the play it's also pretty good but you will almost always play Glistener Elf when on the play. If you don't have any Elf's than Noble Hierarch is always a safe and good play.
- Blighted Agent: The agent is also one of your 12 Infect threads. It's best when the opponent has creatures on the board to block and attack but no ways to deal with your creatures. In a scenario like this your agent will always hit them for free with no blocking shenanigens. Because it costs 2 mana you can play it as early as turn two. The optimal case is that you play a turn one Noble Hierarch and a turn two Blighted Agent. In that case you have one open mana and an infector on the board.
- Viridian Corrupter: A one of in the deck. It's good when you have no other infectors on the board or an artifact you can't deal with such as Spellskite or Oblivion Stone (Obvlivion Stone when they obviously have not enough mana to destroy the entire board).
Spells:
Pump spells:
- Might of Old Krosa: This spell is probably your best pump spell in terms of mana cost and effectiveness. It can hurt your opponent as early as turn two because when you can give a creature +4/+4 and it's a 1/1 creature and you damage your opponent with it you are already did 5/10 infect damage to them. It's not as good on the defense because it only gives +2/+2 outside of the main phase but on the offense it's probably your best and most efficient pump spell.
- Mutagenic Growth: Mutagenic Growth is the most cheap pump in your deck with a pherexian mana cost of one green (green mana or two life to pay). It only gives +2/+2 but this 2 damage can be game changing. It also fills up your graveyard for free. That's important becuase of the next spell.
- Become Immense: This pump gives your creature the most damage output at once. +6/+6 for 6 mana does not sound that great but with the delve mechanic and in the best case only costing one green mana makes it really good.
- Vines of Vastwood: This is the best protection spell in the deck. It gives your creature protection from spells or abilities of your opponents. When kicked (paying one additional green mana) it also gives a creature +4/+4. The best thing is it can have so much impact because it "counters" the best spot removal spell in the format such as Path to Exile, Terminate or Lightning Bolt.
Protection Spells:
- Vines of Vastwood: "see above"
- Apostle's Blessing: This is also a great spell in the modern infect deck. It can give one of your creatures protection from a chosen color or from artifacts. This is good for protecting your creatures but also so they cant get blocked.
Other Spells:
- Dismember: As one of in the deck it's primarily function is to destroy one high impact creature your opponent controls. (e.g. Melira, Sylvok Outcast, Spellskite or Tarmogoyf).
- Spell Pierce: Spell Pierce is another one of spell in the deck. It has it's biggest impact early on in the game to counter some of your opponents high value non-creature spells such as Liliana of the Veil, Chalice of the Void for 1 and Karn Liberated. It also can counter a removal spell and is helpful in counter fights later in the game.
- Twisted Image: This card is here for some cycling or to destroy some 0 power creatures your opponents controll. It also can swap the power of a pendlehaven pumped creature to deal one more infect that can be huge.
- Gitaxian Probe: This is the perfect card for you to get some information about what your opponent works with. You see their entire hand and draw a card. Perfect! They know that you know what they have in hand and therefore play why safer. Also when they dont't know what's in your hand the bluffing game is on your side. The disadvantage is that you can't take away cards that are bad for you but hey!! you are able to draw a card. It's still good trust me! (It also fills your graveyard for free).
- Distortion Strike: This card is helpful for creatures that can be blocked such as Viridian Corrupter of Glistener Elf but it can also give your creature the 1 extra damage to finish off an opponent.
Lands:
- Breeding Pool: Just your U/G mana. It's a shockland so you can fetch it up with your 10 fetches.
- Misty Rainforest / Verdant Catacombs / Windswept Heath / Wooded Foothills: This are all fetches you can play in the deck.
- Forest: 2 Forest for basic lands because of path to exile and ghost quarter.
- Pendelhaven: This is a green mana producing land with an excellent abillity for the infect deck. It gives a 1/1 creature +1/+2. Only 2 copies because it's legendary.
- Inkmoth Nexus: In my opinion the best card in the deck. It's the best infect creature because it's only vulnerable to removal when you animate it and this is only in your turn where you can set up play easily. It's vulnerable to land destruction as well but you can always animate it and Vines of Vastwood will save the day. It gets kinda useless when the opponent has a Melira in play because it's a creature that deals no damage at all in that particular case. But it's the best card in the deck I guess.
Sideboard
Here is the weakness of the infect deck in my opinion. Most other decks in the format right now will have a lot more to say against you than you agianst them after side boarding. But infect will still be infect after side boards and can beat any strategy in modern.The cards I have in my side are:
- Dryad Arbor: This is in the sideboard when I feel like I have to go the normal damage route to win the game. It's also a surpirse factor when they play Liliana of the Veil and say -2 and you fetch for a dryad arbor and don't have to sacrafice your infect thread.
- Dispel: Just a cheap counterspell for counterwars against blue decks. It's also quite fine against Collected Company and Chord of Calling.
- Spell Pierce: Another cheap counter spell. I bring this in against control decks or sometimes even Tron when i know i can counter their planeswalkers easily.
- Twisted Image: The next blue spell. This comes in when I feel like i need more card draw or when they have many Spellskite's or Birds of Paradise.
- Spellskite: This is a great creature card to protect your creatures from removal spells. It's also valuable in the Bogles matchup and can shift the infect mirror in your favour all by itself.
- Kitchen Finks: I play with this cards since a few weeks so I don't know exactly when to side this in but I can safely assume that it's pretty good against Burn and also quite valuable against Jund.
- Dismember: This is in the sideboard for decks like Abzan Company or Hatebear strategies where they have problematic creatures for the infect deck. With Dismember you can remove them at the cost of a few life and on mana.
- Grafdigger's Cage: This is a great card against decks that play alot with their graveyards or libraries. It's good against the rising Dredge decks in modern right now. I also bring it in against Abzan Company because it completley shuts down the combo. Against control decks it's also not bad becuase it kinda "counters" Snapcaster Mage.
- Nature's Claim: This is a great card against Artifact decks like Affinity (Robots) and against Burn you can also bring it in.
Overview
The thing with infect was, is and will always be that it's definitely not easy to play and really hard to play against. When your opponent makes a move in combat at the wrong time you just win the "counter war" and kill him in one turn. So as opponent you have to know exactly when to go in. Otherwise you will get onshot. As infect pilot you have to be aware of a few things.
- When can i move in safely?
- Is it worth risking that my creature could die and i get no damage in on my opponent?
- When can i pressure my opponent with my infect threads?
I will not answer these questions here because that would be to much for a simle deck description.But when you can answer these questions you can probably play the deck on a decent level. Of course there are so many things to keep in mind that at the beginning you have to live with the fact that you are making mistakes. It's also a fact that you can't just win every match when you just started playing with the deck.But when the time goes on and you play more with the deck against new and different people and new creative decks you will learn the in's and out's of the deck.
Strategy
As I mentioned earlier in this description Infect can be played as a combo deck and as an aggro deck.Most of the time you will win with an aggro plan agianst most of the decks in modern right now. But against some decks you can play as aggressive as you want and just combo all of your pumps on one creature and otk you opponent. In the Matchup section I will cover what plan you should/can use against the different decks.
Aggro Plan
By aggro plan I mean beatdown. You hit your opponent for just 2 or 3 damage a turn and have a much faster clock because you are infect. Most of the time you use the aggro plan when you have a few more creatures in your hand as usual. You can "flood" the board with "Elf's" and "Agent's" and beatdown for 2 damage each turn. It's also possible to use the aggro plan wiht one creature on the boar + a Noble Hierarch and Pendelhaven. This setup is the optimal position to beat down your opponent safely. And when they try to do something in combat you just combo you pumps and protection spells together and kill them.
Combo Plan
You can approach the combo route in 2 or 3 different angles. When your draw is really good you can just play a turn one Glistener Elf and kill your opponent on turn 3 or even on turn 2. The combo route though is much more risky because when you move in and your opponent has one counterspell to much for you to deal with you just burned out your whole arsenal of pump and protection and maybe got 4 or 5 damage in rather than a kill.It's also possible to play a bit more devensive when you are willing to go for the combo route. You can just setup the one turn you kill your opponent by stacking your hand with pump-, counter- and protection-spells.
Match-ups
For match-ups I'm just gonna picke the top decks in the metagame right now. So here is the list:
Jund:
This is one of 3 match-ups that are bad for you on this list. With their ridiculous number of removal spells and ways to shut your entire strategy down it's not easy to win against this deck. I would say 52/48 in favour of Jund. The problem for you is that after sideboarding it wont get better. Cards like Fulminator Mage, Ancient Grudge, and Night of Souls' Betrayal that come in from the Sideboard make your life even harder as an infect player. Besides Junds ability to control the game they also have a great way to generate card advantage with Dark Confidant and a super good beat down plan with Tarmogoyf, Huntmaster of the Fells and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet.In this match-up you almost always go with the aggro plan because it's much safer and you will never win a "counter war" with all the efficient removal spells they have.
Naja Burn:
This match-up is 50/50 in my opinion. It's really easy for the burn player to destroy your creatures. On the other hand your combo plan is the way to go here because with a good draw it is much faster than the aggro plan of the burn deck. You should not lean back and watch what they are doing because your life total can drop to 0 in the blink of an eye. After siding it gets a little bit better because their only real options are Deflecting Palm and Destructive Revelry.
Affinity:
I would give the Infect deck the advantage here and would say 55/45 for infect. Infect generally is pretty free to do whatever it wants to do and the combo plan seems to be the right path for the match-up. The match-up is a race in terms of who kills the opponent faster. I think Infect can do that fast killing more consistant that Affinity. After sideboard you even have a way to deal with Cranial Plating, Nature's Claim.
Dredge:
The new dredge deck hmm? I think the deck earned it's spot on the list because it's in the top 3 of aggro decks. Therefore you should not take it lightly. It's capable of having explosive draws with a lot of power on the battlefiel as early as turn 2. The match-up for the infect deck is probably 55/45 in favour on infect. I can't say for sure because I only played like 2 times against it at FNM but yeah...They have access to cards like Ancient Grudge in the sideboard to stop your Inkmoth Nexus. You should also be warned though because they often run one or two Thoughtseize in the sideboard.
Tron:
This match-up is probably the one where you have the best chances of winning wihtout doing much for it. I would say the match-up is 65/35 in favour of Infect before the new meta but now they tend to run alot of spot removal such as Lightning Bolt and Sudden Shock. So I would say 60/40. Out of the sideboard they tend to bring in Warping Wail and the previously mentioned Sudden Shock. Besides those cards you will have an easy match-up especially when on can deploy a turn 1 glistener elf on the play.
Nahiri Jeskai / Jeskai Controll:
This is the second match-up on this list that turns out to be bad or not even for the infect deck. They run more removal spells in their mainboard than you run creatures. With Nahiri's ability to get an emrakul out of the deck they got an actual win condition witch is why it is better than the other controll decks in the format right now. They also have access to scary cards out of their sideboard. (e.g. Engineered Explosives, Wear//tear and Supreme Verdict. So I would rate this 55/45 in favour of the Jeskai deck.
Abzan Company:
Abzan Company ..... This is one of the most draining and annoying match-ups for the infect deck. With access to mainboard Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Spellskite They can really shut down your entire game plan. In this match-up you will almost always win with regular damage except you can fire of an effective Dismember on one of their Meliras. Out of the sideboard both sides can bring in some good stuff. The Abzan deck will bring in Path to Exile, probably Eidolon of Rhetoric maybe Thoughtseize, Fulminator Mage or more Spellskite's. The infect deck can bring in cards like Twisted Image, Dismember and Grafdigger's Cage. So this match-up is likely in favour of the Abzan Company deck 60/40 because they shut down your infect damage almost always the two decks face off agaisnt each other.
As far as for this list this is it for the match-ups. Hope you liked it and...
...Thanks for reading ! :)
