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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 พ.ค. 2024
- #mtg #magicthegathering #mtgcommander
Infect is a really cool and fun mechanic for a format like commander, but you need to be a little creative with how you build your deck.
(i stole this video format from Hearthstone youtuber Flare who you should totally check out he makes really good stuff) - เกม
nah vishgraz is fine. Him being huge is useless either way. You just want to blink him and make a fuckton and a half of mites, and then murder someone.
Agreed, Vishgraz works great in a deck that’s able to blink him a bunch, it only takes 10 mite hits after all. I’ll concede that it’s a pretty slow strat though
The biggest problem with poison imo is that there... really isn't a good area of play for it to fit in at. In low level games the 10 counters are really difficult for newer decks and less experienced players to work around, so it stomps easily. In high level games, especially in modern, it has *some* use... but is ultimately outclassed by other, faster strategies. This kinda just leaves midrange games which tend to still not want to play against poison because the mechanic is unfun to play against even with proper foresight and counterplay. Even with house rules to adjust the amount of counters needed to kill, the mechanic is either slowed down so much its obsolete, or is doubled down upon by proliferate and stax effects that grind the pace of the game down to a halt.
No matter how I look at it, a poison-centric deck is just hard to work with, and from what I've seen most people who still want to play poison simply put a few strong poison inflicting cards into their decks as a last resort instant-kill effect. (Tainted strike and blightsteel colossus are the first two to come to mind)
Honestly, I'm glad phyrexians have other mechanics aside from being exclusively poison and infect. I really love the art style of the creature type, and it would be such a shame to see such an awesome concept for a world be completely obsolete when put in the actual game.
If you want to try an infect commander that - in my experience - has worked really well at mid-to-high levels of non-cedh play, I’d recommend Gale Waterdeep Prodigy + Scion of Halaster!
The deck tries to cast the proliferate/poison spells over and over, which makes it a steady flow of counters rather than a “win out of nowhere” strategy. It also means you can dedicate card slots to good cards instead of the Nth best guy with infect like most decks.
Being a deck that runs a critical mass of instant/sorceries also means that aggro decks that want you dead can definitely push past your small boards and take you out if they put their mind to it.
I have 2 infect decks, lxhel and volrath
But I never really get to play them, ixhel will get targeted immediately because not only is it obviously infect, it also steals people's cards, two mechanics people hate
Volrath is fine starting out, but then people see it's an -1/-1 and infect deck and they start blowing up anything that gets counters
I love infect, but i know it turns a 1v1v1v1 game into a 1v3 game really quick
The one thing I always warn them just so that no one gets blindsided is that if they hit 6 infect they are in the kill zone
Also, toxic is just not as satisfying as infect, but some toxic creatures are absolute monsters so it is fine
i have to disagree, making an atraxa poison deck viable in high power edh is doable, with 4 colors you can make an excelent control deck with the inevitability of poison as a wincon. i did just that and the deck performs consistently well.
Imagine not bullying your pod with 100% lore accurate phyrexian decks. Couldn't be me!
Honestly i enjoy my ixhel lower power infect deck. Embracing the idea of corrupting the opponent instead of killen them with infect is a way more fun way to use infect imo. The deck is still strong enough to do this gameplan its just not a turbo infect commander like the UG modern variant.
Ixhel when build correctly lets you play infect in commander without getting an eye roll from everyone at the table and not beings the problem from turn zero.
Agreed its not fun just dying in one hit
My personal "infect" deck is mono-blue proliferate with Reality Chip as the commander.
You know what's funny, last week I just finished making a Phyrexian deck having Marneus Calgar as my commander since I noticed there were good chunk of Phyrexian cards creates a bunch of mite, golem and incubator tokens, I either win by overrunning with said tokens or drain their health away by sacrificing the tokens.
Another commander idea is the new trostani who gives stuff double strike, so you can double toxic hits
But doesn't having black or blue is a big downside, besides it doesn't help you geting pass blockers either.
@@gasgy true! But green having good trample access should help a good chunk
I've been brewing up a "keyword" tribal Trostani deck, but building around infect is actually a great idea. Being in green and white you have access to great combat tricks, proliferate and ramp. It would be so easy to flood the board and instant kill with whatever creature is left unblocked.
I don't build Ixhel as an Infect deck. I build Ixhel as a toxic phyrexian tribal deck, corrupting my opponents slowly. For in the end, I am playing my deck and their decks, so All Will Be One.
Having gotten many full-pod infect kills with my Atraxa and Skittles decks, I shall simply disagree.
these decks definitely can work! (I even call Skittles “the good one” in the video) I just think that Atraxa specifically doesn’t do the deck any huge favors. She’s great for color access, but you could run something like Reyhan/Ishai partners to mostly the same effect.
@@saeiouth It's all in how you build the synergies to compensate for the singleton nature, and I'd like to think my Atraxa is a delightful symphony of synergy between the infect creatures, some pump, and proliferate.
And the flavor win of putting Phyresis on Atraxa is the chef's kiss.
The best infect commander now? Felix Five Boots
unfortunately, toxic and infect are not triggered abilities :(
he does still work with anyone who proliferates on combat damage, or a trigger like Fynn the Fangbearer!
I feel like The Wise Mothman is a good new option for Sultai Infect. It can pump up your small creatures as the game progresses.
Kamiz is so good as a poison commander. I've been playing them for a while now. When you add tymna, and breena there is alot of card advantage. Also due to the colors you have alot of interaction aswell.
Venser is actually pretty good at the poison game. He drops early to push a poison damage early, and his proliferate trigger is deceptively good as a sac outlet for more proliferating. I build venser when phyrexian all will be one released when I pulled him out of my first pack.
Ria ivor is the commander for my infect deck. I dont play infect cards in the deck bc they are so below rate and get outclassed easily. So instead i play evasive disruption creatures that can get in for ria ivor to turn into mites.
Basicly your turning a 2 power archon of emeria attack into 2 poison counters next turn which is comparable to 8 regular damage. From all the games ive played with ria she function converts real damage into infect with a turn delay.
Also in the form of tokens which you can do alot with.
The slide talking about hammertime singlehandedly convinced me to subscribe. Looking forward to see what videos you make in the future.
Ria ivor at its core is a token deck that i’ve had some good success going wide is still an effective strategy. doesnt seem like much but with evasion you can make 3 or more tokens each turn, not even including token doublers and things like that, its nice when you can get that going. Corpse knight, rosie cotton and intangible virtue are cheap ways to drain and wxpand the board since i know ppl will block and kill the mite tokens
Still run Phyrexian tribal. Not my strongest deck by far, actually one of my weakest. Still
Fun
Phyrexian tribal sounds super fun! do you have a list you’d be comfortable sharing?
I have no problem with posting a deck list, I’ll get on moxfield after a bit and get it sorted!
@saeiouth tried to post 3 times, seems youtube has blocked link sharing
this is all why i built my infect commander deck with rigo streetwise mentor. a lot of my toxic creatures have low enough power to trigger him, and then once ive spread poison to the table i use the card draw and bant colors to pivot to a slower gameplan (with propaganda/ghostly prison/other control pieces) and eventually proliferate a win. ive found it to be way more fun and resilient than a typical voltron build
This just made me realize that Illuna could be a scary infect commander to make a small Temur infect creature become a 6/6 flyer
You know, I actually do have an Infect deck in the works. Thanks all-seeing algorithm! :D I'm gonna see how Lazav, Familiar Stranger fares with the Infect strategy: once I've had a chance to play a few games with the deck, I'll let you know how it performed.
Yeah, so I kind of just lost interest in the idea halfway through building the deck: after watching a video mentioning Lazav the Multifarious, I realized that both decks basically enact the exact same gameplan with only minor tweaks in the finer details. Multifarious decks are also lightning rods for removal and hate due to their perceived threat level and I didn't want to replicate that effect with what is essentially a less powerful iteration of the character.
That being said, I would still like to build a unique Infect deck someday and I've seen enough interesting new cards out there that I think it can still happen. Persuasive Interrogators from MKM comes to mind as a sufficient example: I'm still proud of myself for using it to instakill a player while I was playing the newest Teysa. We'll see how things go.
Good video that illustrates the shortcommings of the better known infect-commanders well. Kamiz is a great pick! I can also recommend [Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa]. He offers evasion to the smaller infectues creatures and offers at least two colors (G/W) to counteract the small cardpool.
I love Sidar Kondo! I’ve got him paired with Ikra Shidiqi for a “2/5 tribal” style deck personally. You’re right though, there are a good handful of partners that are great for infect! totally slipped my mind.
@@saeiouth Yep, the partners are pretty cool. They allow the players to create their own takes and styles on unique themes. My prefered one is [Kraum]. Access to blue speeks for itself. But I cant praise enough the advantages that red brings to the table. Despite the lack of creatures, the addition of haste, additional combats or double strike add a tremendous amount of power/speed and add greatly to the [Sidar]-poison-through-small-creatures-theme. Plus, in edh basic card draw whenever an opponent casts their 2nd spell also never hurts.
Another funny card people should try in infect is [Riding the Dilu Horse] from Portal Three Kingdoms :D
I run a hapatry visier of poisons infect deck that focuses on applying counters to creatures. It wants you to block the infect. Then it wins either by going infinite or just sacrificing all the tokens to yogmoth thran physician or swinging wide with fynn the fang bearer. It's infect tribal but not oriented on dealing poison counters.
There is some partner commander that really works well with infect strategy, like sidar kondor of jamuraa + jeska thrice reborn if you want to go for fast kill with 1 hit k.o. attack, but with the risk to gas out really quickly, or a more consistent one with Sidar kondor of jamuraa + Tymna the weaver
While all the commanders made for infect kinda suck, my skithiryx deck is pretty consistent with lots of removal, little infect goobers, combat tricks, and direct poison giving for late game, the commander is basically just an 8th hand card to get another infect goober out
As a buddy of mine said once when Infect was new... "If you're making a poison deck, you also need to make the deck make use of Proliferate."
My friend runs a bit of a memier deck using snpadax mutate onto an infect creature. It serves as both removal and gives a weaker creature better stats and double strike in most cases. Still not great since it’s a removal magnet but fun enough
I need a full Gale infect deck tech lol sounds sweet
ask and ye shall receive (dont be scared by the price i put my pretty cards and fetches in here but the actual core of the deck is quite cheap) www.moxfield.com/decks/DXtd3kWdwE-RQsriLyy_LA
I have a Venser, Corpse Puppet deck that combos to proliferate infinitely with Dross Skorpion and Throne of Geth. I usually get the first counter placed on my opponents with the Instant/Sorcery spells that give your opponents a counter; rarely do I need to attack them.
You conflated Toxic, Wither, and Infect throughout the video.
E.g. Fynn the fangbearer is not an infect commander, he would just be a toxic/deathtouch commander. Infect adds -1/-1’s to creatures which Fynn cannot do.
One problem that I noticed in your video is that you did not include commanders that actually synergize with these infect creatures. Many non-infect commanders still play the counter game, and having access to these -1/-1 counters on creatures can help board states. Think of Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons; Vhati il-Dal; The Scorpion God; Toxrill, and many more.
It’s not that Infect is a bad mechanic for commander, it can actually be a great one depending on how you build it; but more towards the point of the video I’m not sure that infect is really a phyrexian specific thing, though a lot of phyrexian’s have infect that’s not like their main deal to my knowledge so it seems weird to pick them out and pick on them for not having the best infect commanders.
A little pedantic but yeah i do kinda lump toxic and infect together for the sake of brevity even though there’s some differences.
However I think if you’re using Infect creatures to set up -1/-1 counter strategies you might be a little lost in the sauce.
@@saeiouth the scorpion god exists tho. And he benefits from those, hence ppl tend to run a bunch of infect creatures in it.
fliers don't matter for hammertime because hammer turns off flying lol
if you activate Nexus again after equipping hammer it regains flying! it works because Hammer doesn’t stop the creature from gaining flying, it just takes away pre-existing instances of flying (check CR 613.7 for more)
Or if you have sigardas aid you can flash in the hammer after no blocks are declared
Atraxa infect can work. It’s nice if you get cards like glistening oil or grafted exoskeleton for Atraxa herself, or her proliferate ability will help reach critical mass with other combos.
The only deck I play that utilizes poison counters is *technically* my Brudiclad deck, since Mirrex spits out toxic Mite tokens. I've only used poison to win once and only because it made the few points difference I needed, but I'd bet someone could go all-in on Mite tokens and/or copy some infect/toxic creatures to make an actual Phyrexian Infect commander. Not sure if it would balance well for Commander, still.
Damn, great video! I feel great things coming for you
I'm trying to make a mid power deck with Saskia, the unyielding, because our local meta is filled with slow artefact/plainswalker grinding decks, with very little interactions
Only infect cards I’ll try to squeeze in a deck are Grafted Exoskeleton, Triumph of the Hordes, and my personal fav Tainted Strike. A 9 power creature will touch the battlefield at least once a game, so being able to take out a pillow fort or life gain player when the opportunity arrives is pretty nice
Tomer from Mtggoldfish recently built an edh Venser corpse puppet poison deck that absolutely slaps
When building Gale and Scion, I seriously thought about running him with a poison theme. The only problem is that there isn't enough good strong spells that poison my opponents. So far I count 4 that I would run, and 8 poison counters isn't enough to win a game. Proliferate can help but that is still just another hoop to jump through once I finally find one of the 4 poison cards in the deck.
Thus I settled for a mill strat to have reanimation at my disposal for my opponents creatures and spells, as well as just fueling my own strategy on top of being a win condition!
I'll think about doing poison again with him once they make 3-4 more good control spells that also poison, until then I'll still be gladly milling people out
I agree with all of your points here. Poison will always be scary for people who don’t run removal and don’t respect it as a threat, but it really isn’t all that good in commander.
For the most part anyone who say it should be 15 or 20 counters to kill has probably just been on the receiving end of tainted strike one too many times, which is more of a combo card than an infect one, frankly. That, or blightsteel which again isn’t really an infect card in my eyes.
If you’re looking for another recommendation, Breena is the most success I’ve had personally. She draws aggro away from you, people want her card draw so she seems more fair and they let her stay on board, she refills your hand with weenies, and you can pump your infect guys at an impressive rate. Slap in unblockable or protection techs and she’s a menace that people underestimate every time they play against her even if it’s the same pod, over and over again.
Love that deck to death, and it works against pretty high power stuff. Doesn’t always win but can always threaten doing so if not interacted with, which is how infect generally works.
Great video!
I actually have a mono white infect deck with Taranika Akroan Veteran as the commander. Punching your opponent with a 4/4 indestructible infect creature every turn is fun plus white has access to a lot of double strike enablers which just quickens the clock. Its not prefect but its definitely unique.
uhhh Brimaz is an insane poison commander, since his proliferate can trigger *every* turn.
Great video! Super underrated channel
I'm quite happy with corrupted on ixehl and doomhive actually. Corrupted is just a flavorful means of building advantage which is totally fine. If you lose some corrupted benefit for killing an opponent so what? That's one less player you have to kill and now I'm closer to winning. It's dumb to say a card is bad because it gets worse when your opponents die. There are many cards in the game like that, that's just part of the game. My Neheb the Eternal's ability gets worse once one of my opponents is dead, but that's still a net positive for me in the position of a multiplayer game.
Ramses Assassin Lord might be the best infect commander as he reads
"Whenever a player loses the game, if they were attacked this turn by an Assassin you controlled, you win the game."
So now all you have to do is take out a single player with infect to win the game which counteracts infects biggest weakness, also he is Dimir which is infects strongest colors.
1: i've never heard of Simic being the "do nothing" colors as it's the most broken color combination in the game right now.
2: Speaking of! My Gretchen Titchwillow pauper commander deck's main win con is recycling and recasting a spell that gives each opponent poison counters. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician's backup plan is winning through proliferating poison counters on opponents.
3: Speaking of there are nine commander options that want you to proliferate, Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus making every time you do proliferate happen twice. Talk about blighted agent lol.
Tekuthal definitley makes proliferate cards much more explosive! Though I recently cut him from my personal Gale/Scion list, since that deck is really tight on creature space and wants some specific boons for the strategy like cost reduction and card filtering. Tekuthal and Flux Channeler both let proliferate strategies just win out of nowhere sometimes lol
Nice one!
How do you make a video about non-phyrexian infect commanders, and you dont mention the GOAT, Mimeoplasm once?
Even had a "Sultai Slammers" section and still no mention, smdh /s
kamiz infect mentioned!!! been running her that way since the deck came out ❤❤
I love the writing in this video! Great job! If you put some more effort into the recording and editing, I think you could produce some really excellent videos. Really excited to see what you do in the future. Also, you say like way too much. Clogs up your points.
As far as i know you keep the counters even if a opponenf dies the rules say the counters cant be removed
Unfortunately, if a player leaves the game (by game loss or forfeit) any counters on that player are removed from the game. they can’t just float in free space not attached to a player. Same way that +1/+1 counters disappear when the creature they were on leaves play.
It's really funny how Poison Counters were so mediocre in its standards because they were consistently horrific in the associated drafts.
This video ignores the importance of proliferating
Personal Experience: infect(and poison) instantly turns the game into 3 v 1 because you only need so much damage/counters to win. I don't think you have given it a fair showing. I had an Atraxa deck that had a bunch of infect cards in it an I had to cut out all the creatures and just leave the cards that gave infect to be seen as a regular player and not public enemy number 1. I have the base Ixhel deck rn and still win a decent amount of games with it. It's not bad, but it is half grinding out the proliferate and half aggro to get the counters out and that can be difficult to balance.
Playing poison is a good way to get knocked out of a game first haha
You didn't mentioned Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres?
he makes a background appearance on one slide :)
Frank Horrigan reporting for duty ;p
Great video
Tyrannax Rex should have been toxic 5.
The best way to play infect is to not play infect except for the last turn of the game.
I had a mono blue tekuthal deck that stormed out to take everyone from zero to 10 in one turn but it required a lot of durdling and planewalker value.
lol yeah. I didn’t want to talk too much about the “social disadvantage” that infect puts you at since it can’t really be mechanically measured, but that first infect card definitely starts a doomsday countdown for the person playing it.
I have a Yawgmoth infect commander deck. It's the most evil looking deck i have, but it usually doesn't have that feeling when i play it. Granted the other 3 I have win either eldrazi, slivers, or Heliod. 🤭
Id only play poison in high powered not casual, or cedh, its good at killing 1 player then dieing to the other 2, its fun to kill the person who targets you first bc chances are your deck can kill them faster than they can kill you
Volrath is Phyrexian btw
The Toxic commanders are terrible. Same as Brimaz out of the box.
However i swapped the commanders into the 99 and ran Reshek/Jibar partners to make all the mites unblockable, and i made a viable casual infect deck.
Yeah, sadly, triumph of the hordes and one shot robot are kinda the onlybway infect consistently wins in commander.
Infect was a very good aggro-combo deck in modern for many years though, don't know why you didn't mention it
Was it ever that good? Was it not just a slower, more interactible boggles deck?
UG Infect is a deck that was around, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “very good”. I thought about giving it a slide, but there just wasn’t anything interesting to say about what was ultimately just a Bogles variant.
Your point on the commander deck is that they are bad at infect but it is a corrupt mechanic. 3 infect counters is all you need.
yeah but like, the infect/toxic creatures don’t magically stop applying those effects once they hit 3 counters. the end goal of the Corrupting Influence deck is to ultimately poison your opponents to death, with Corrupt cards giving the strategy mid-to-late game synergies.
blink vishgraz is strong in commander..no need to get him big
Anyone that thinks Atraxa is not a good infect commander never played against a real atraxa infect deck.
2:55 "I know its a lore thing but I don't care"
...It's not a lore thing. Have you *seen* the lore for most commander precons?
Oh, Ixhel actually has a story. huh. STILL, nothing about that story is particularly anti-U. except maybe-
WELL ANYWAY, I do not think for one second that the colour identity of Ixhel (or, to be honest, any Magic character ever) was picked because it fit their personality. It's always vice-versa. The deck's commanders aren't U because Abzan colours is where they decided to centre the toxic archetype in ONE, and lore has oh so precious little to do with it.
Also, I'll note another downside to Ixhel, namely; everything you stole so far gets taken away once you knock its original owner out of the game.
I definitely could have worded the point better there. I meant to say something more along the lines of “not wanting to print another W/U/B/G infect commander, they took one color away from Atraxa’s spawn” or something to that effect. Lore was the wrong word to use.
Also yeah losing all of the previously stolen cards sucks
@@saeiouth Fair enough, it's a very semantic nitpick. And I also just realised my comment missed one very important point; great video! Very interesting analysis. Well-presented.
honestly infect needs to be either banned or beaten to a pulp with the nerf hammer in edh. 10 poison counters is far too few for the format and it is way too easy to get someone to that number.
it's really not
@@saeiouth it really is. You get one poison counter and there are so many ways to proliferate for doing just about any game action its super easy to take out a player or table in one or two turns, with no effort.
@@TraskLargero idk proliferate cards are kinda bad outside of like, Flux Channeler exactly
@saeiouth Evo sage proliferates for every land, inexorable tide and flux channeler for each time you cast a spell, tekuthal to do it twice. Rotpriest for targeting creatures with spells. Super easy to get to 10 poison counters.
@@TraskLargero Tekuthal and Inexorable Tide are both pretty bad, and Rotpriest requires you to cast 30 spells targeting your own creatures. and if you’re dropping 9 lands into play in 1-2 turns to trigger the evo sage win then honestly that’s a totally earned win
This might be a hot take but poison killing a dude in commander with just 10 counters makes it automatically un-fun.
Ya... this whole thing sounded to me like Phyrexian gaslight propaganda.
Infect is just an unfun mechanic that makes damage permanent on your creatures and was insanely oppressive in modern during the Mirrodin block.
For casual play these decks are just fun killers.
It's quite a common opinion in my local area.
Have you tried winning with poison counters? Granted my deck wasn't fully poison based, more phyrexian proliferate, but it's hard. People know what you're doing and when they do there's a lot of ways to easily stop you. If you got combo'd by one in a game, maybe that's a power level discussion?
I get that not increasing the poison cap can be frustrating to think about, but in practice having to get out 30 counters against 3 different strategies simultaneously isn’t exactly an easy road to victory. In a format where 3-card infinite combos are standard win conditions, I’d argue that the mechanic is fine.
@@TheDevonshireMint The main thing everyone says is its to strong for casual and to weak for optimized decks. Its in an odd spot
If you try to minmax infect I am using every removal and counterspell at you, and attacking you each combat, and rallying each player to do the same.
Im pretty sure for most commander players the millisecond a Phyrexian hits the field its a 3v1