MTG, infection hate!!! (and question)

[coff]

Whew, lotta things to respond to...

@jaka, Poison was not infect. There were a total of 7 creatures that dolled out poison counters and they weren't tied to power at all.

zephoid, If you read the articles on Daily MtG as obsessively as I do you might've seen the article MoRo wrote about power creep. If you look carefully the power in MtG doesn't creep so much as slide. Remember Alara block? Jund was on top and aggro was king. Before that it was 5CC and BU Fairies lead by Bitterblossom and Cryptic Command. Come M10 and, ta-da! Baneslayer. The power shifted from aggro to UW Control. We've now got Jace the Walletsculptor keeping the casual fun out of FNM but it doesn't stop the Spikes from shelling out $600 for a deck.

And now to respond to OP:

@wisdom, Judging by your mention of life gain and infect as strategies you see I am positive you're playing kitchen table Magic (also that you're playing White). That's not a judgment. I prefer it to Standard myself. But if you look at the top decks in standard (here) you'll notice the only card with Infect that got included is Inkmoth Nexus and never more than 2 per deck. I'd much rather see a turn 2 Plague Myr than turn 2 Stoneforge Mystic for Sword of Feast and Famine.

As far as dealing with Infect... White has plenty of ways to deal with creatures.

Gotta run, class entering the computer lab. Otherwise I'd add more.

Edit rather than double post: I'm back online, bwa-ha-ha.

In a typical 20 life game I've never felt particularly threatened by Infect. Most of the creatures die to Lightning Bolt. They all seem to be costed the same as a creature that would have double the power. What type of play group are you used to? Standard, casual, friends and/or strangers at a local store?

I usually play casual kitchen table style Magic at the comic store I work at once a week. The first time I showed up to play with the casual crowd it was with a Grixis deck packed with my favorite UBR Mythics and tons of accel and griefer black enchants. It became very quickly apparent that my collection and investment in cards far outstripped everyone else and I had become the thing I hate. The person who wins because they spent more on cards.

Now I typically go with semi-pauper Izzet combo decks. I still win excessively but it's with a decks that typically run only 4 rares and they're simply a playset of $1 "jank".

My advice is to adapt. Change strategies. Run more removal. If you give me an idea of what you're running and what you're having trouble dealing with I can point you to some solutions. If you do I'll post my favorite deck list for multiplayer lulz.

[wisdomseyes1]

coff: strangely, no, I do not play white for the most part. Currently I am running a white black deck (which annoys people if I get blazing archon out... 9 mana creatures can't attack you) but my friends no longer are able to play there most common decks, and no longer bring them.

You can't imagine how annoying it is without infect to deal with a green white deck with natrual spring and beacon of immortality off the wall with startlight invokers backing them up and preventing all damage, then charging with flying creatures.

No, my most common decks are... well any guild from the guild pact. Changes depending on my mood. Right now its haunting and i gain the life my opponent losses, but I am a blue player naturally.

Note: day of judgment and similar one are the only 2 I haven't seen (and don't own)

[coff]

Whoops, Ninja'd while editing. So is the WG Lifegain deck the one with Infect creatures?

Also black has the best answer to Beacon of Immortality. I recommend you pick up a playset of False Cure. Oh hai, double your life? Ok, now loose it all.

[wisdomseyes1]

Jun 8, 2011 0:15:41 GMT coff said:

Whoops, Ninja'd while editing. So is the WG Lifegain deck the one with Infect creatures?

The infect creatures are coming from the pherexia set. Blight agent, crypt something (2/2 bring creature with infect back to your hand from graveyard), blight manba, Swarmlord in one of the decks, ext...

Only 3 of us out of the 9 here playing are not using infect. I, being one of them because I am loyal to the guildpact (and may try my hand in futuresight) A soldier/ burn deck player, and a cancel/ myr player. The myr player used to have a white green deck, but stopped using it when it became worthless.

[coff]

I'm still vague on how your deck is built but from what I gather your buddies are playing Boros Weenie and artifact combo/control. If the Myr deck isn't comboing at least a little bit it needs some tooling. So many great cards for it from new and old Mirrodin. Steel Overseer, Myr Galvanizer combo, Myr Superion all deserve consideration. Though going back to Green and running 3 or 4 copies of Melira, Sylvok Outcast is a slap in the face to all those infecty players.

Boros Soldier burn is a toughie. Infect, especially the way you've described it, is primarily aggro. Boros Weenie tries to do the same thing but the -1/-1 counters add up. The match up can be tough, especially if a Phyrexian Crusader hits the board. First Strike and Protection help a lot here. Knighthood and Rise of Hobgoblins seem like great choices but it might be more efficient for creatures that have one or both as well as Soldier Lords. Field Marshal, White Knight, Blood Knight (and Black Knight for you) come to mind. As for unblockability, any small burn or kill spell will prevent that. Spells with pro-artifact are sparse out of Green but Pristine Angel and Apostle's Blessing (in the new set, and common to boot) can help hold off pesky artifact creatures. Viridian Claw is another First Strike equipment from Besieged. The big downside of this is that it's an aggro deck playing defensively. But staving off the horde while you slowly amass an army is a decent way to go. Lightmine Field will also do a great job of keeping the 1/1s away. Meanwhile a few creature pump enchantments and lords to get the weenies over the field.

Now to your deck. White and Black have the best removal in the game. I don't know if you noticed but the sentence in my above post about white creature removal has a hyperlink every word. You've got cheap spot removal for every type of permanent, hand disruption, and mass removal better than any color combo. My favorite creature for BW is the Zombie Panda, otherwise known as Stillmoon Cavalier. It makes a great follow up to a Wrath effect. Clear board and cast a pro-BW knight with option to give it first strike, flying, and fire-breathing.

Two of the great removal spells I left out of the cryptic message above (we really need something to make our hyperlinks more obvious) are Solemn Offering and it's more narrow twin Divine Offering. The former has been printed in M10 and M11 and should be readily available since it's common, the latter is in..Scars?

Preventing damage prevents poison counters as well. Angel's Song was in Alara, Batwing Brume from Eventide (and Archenemy) is brutal when someone is coming at you with an army of insect tokens off of a Swarmlord. Arrest, Revoke Existence, Forced Worship. One that should be easy to acquire is Phyrexian Rebirth. Oooo, Norn's Annex will mean any creature that attacks you from a non-white deck will cost your opponent 2 life. "Yea, sure I'll take 1 poison counter from Blighted Agent as long as you pay 2 life".

Is your deck Haunt themed? I never really liked the mechanic myself. It is only really effective if your opponent has creatures, your creatures keep dying, and you have a way to kill the haunted creatures. I'd rather just keep killing/exiling all of their creatures until I can play a big fatty (or pumpable weenie like SMCav or Natuko Husk). If you are going to be going with haunt (of even if you don't and opt for a creature light control deck) Innocent blood is a great spell to cast on turn 1 but especially turn 2 once each of your opponents has blown their 2 mana on an infect creature, it also helps late game remove their creatures and choose a creature of your own you want to use to Haunt. It's big brother is Barter in Blood, Fleshbag Marauder and Abyssal Gatekeeper are the same thing on a body.

I don't know your age, monetary situation, or proximity to a dedicated gaming store (aside from a place for 40k obviously) so I tried to keep my recommendations semi-current and on the affordable side of things. I'm 26, own a car, work at a comic shop, have 3 game stores somewhat nearby with a wide selection, so getting the cards I want doesn't tend to be a problem for me. I'll get my Johnny-senses going and start thinking of better recommendations than "kill their stuff". I'm primarily a combo player so I seek the cheap ($$$wise) cards that no one wants to run and figure out how to break them.

Currently I'm building a deck based on Mindcrank + Bloodchief Ascension as well as Training Grounds + Izzet Gildmage.

Edit: Oh, as an other note, +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters negate each other. If infect is giving your creatures the blues getting some counter producing cards is a good remedy.

Second Edit: If I'm going to fast, using foreign lingo, or taking too far let me know. It's my Izzet nature for my thoughts to get ahead of my reason.

[wisdomseyes1]

Boros is one of the decks I play. The soldier deck is pure white, with lots of cards that give soldiers +1/+1 or +0/+1 or +1/+0, along with field martial and martial coupe

Myrs is shockingly scary complaired to how it looks. 4 silver myrs, 4 gold myrs, 2 myr smiths, 3 battlesphears, 4 galvinizers, 1 myr sire, 4 myr resevars(spelling fail), 2 myr propagators, 1 flash myr, 4 myr... god whats it called... 5 mana, tap put a 1/1 myr token into play and tap 5 untaped myrs to put a myr creature from your deck into play. 3 cancels and 4 stotic rebuddle (same thing but metal craft so it costs 2), and the scariest of them all... tempered steel. TEMPERED FREAKING STEEL!!! Before he made that deck... i never put "destroy target enchantment" cards in my deck, because enchantments usually weren't a problem being limited to 1 guy or not providing a massive bonus. in this case, his deck is built about 10 guys becoming 3/3's, 5/5, more if galvinizer is out, who untaps them all at the end of the turn for 1 mana.

The infect decks I play against are the Swarmlord deck with all of the black taken out and blue added in, and a blue black infect deck that is all about proliferating.

The decks I play... every guild in ravnica. Every single one. I bring a different deck every week, and really have no intention of buying new cards (mostly because i love the cards and combos I started with, don't want infect cards, and love a challenge )

Now to your deck. White and Black have the best removal in the game. I don't know if you noticed but the sentence in my above post about white creature removal has a hyperlink every word.

I actually directly addressed the cards in the links in my previous post.

Is your deck Haunt themed? I never really liked the mechanic myself. It is only really effective if your opponent has creatures, your creatures keep dying, and you have a way to kill the haunted creatures. I'd rather just keep killing/exiling all of their creatures until I can play a big fatty

The haunt mechanic does not really have to apply to your opponents creatures. Orzhov Euthanist, Orzhov Pontiff, Shadow lance, Pillar of sleeplessness, Blind hunter, and cry of contrition are some of my favorite cards. Euthanist is great because it allows me to kill anything if I haunt a weak creature of mine (say infectious host) and block with it. Pontiff allows me to kill hoards of 1/1's or make one final sweep with +1/+1 to all of my creatures. It took me a wile to figure the mechanic out, but it seems to work once you get the hang of it (assuming life is an actual factor int he game)

In addition, life loss is hard to counter. Where many cards say, "prevent damage", I have yet to see a card that says "prevent loss of life" (except the 8 mana 8/8 golem that says your life total can not change)

However, my favorite guild from the set has to be a tie between golgari and Az.... (WB guild). Golgari dredge theme deck is just mean to opponents if you know when to dredge, and when not to. WB set shuts opponents down and becomes the ultimate troll deck with mass flying and forecasting (makes sense that the deck that lets other people do nothing is the government of the city )

[Psychichobo]

I think your problem possibly is is that you're tying yourself down to a particular series, rather than exploring other sets. Haunt is a very awkward mechanic, and really you need something that works faster, against what is essentially an aggro deck.

The green blue phyrexia you've been fighting is a mostly pre-built deck, you can buy it now. It has the Swarmlord on the front cover, I believe. It is pretty brutal, but infect is in 1v1's.

Basically, no matter how good your deck is, if it's not fast enough to cope with aggro infect it's stuck. You need to mess around with it or try out a much faster deck.

Black removal's awesome. Nuff said. Doomblades and Go For The Throats and Terrors and oh my. Heck, I even have a few Chill To The Bone, which destroys nonsnow creatures. That's a good card indeed.

A few one offs like that won't hurt the Ravnica themes. By black/white I assume you mean an Orzhov deck? Doomblade fits in pretty comfortably then. As does the white exile spells (there's a ridiculously good one from Eventide that's black and white).

Infect players rely on you being too protective of your creatures. You have to be ruthless and throw in stuff that can afford to die. The Euthanist isn't too bad, charge them with something and if it gets blocked drop him in. Use him to block something cheap, and then haunt another cheap blocker. That's a lot of things you could potentially kill.

However, you will need some newer cards, or means of directly destroying stuff. The Swarmlord has to be killed, there's no question about that, else he'll end the game for you. Your opponent won't bring him out unless you're infected, and you've got one turn before he starts spewing out insects en masse.


As for the Myr deck... yeah, that's evil. Especially if he's got that damn artifact that lets you bring them back from the graveyard. Nothing quite like being run over by a giant ball of myrs, literally...



Finally... consider a few shard matches. If you don't know, that's where you sit in a pentagram setup (5 players, you can do it with 7 and 9 and so on with a bit of reworking), and to win you must defeat the two people directly opposite you. You cannot attack the people next to you, but you can cast spells on them or their creatures.
You pass turns over by the next turn going to the person second to the left of you (so ideally before your turn it'll be one of your enemies's goes, and then after you it'll be your other enemy's go).
This setup's good as it means players who try to go aggro and overwhelm people have two opponents to directly contend with, and those players may form a temporarily alliance against him. It's quite political, and it gives slower decks a chance to get going. Infect players in our shards always draw the fire too...

[Tyamius, Shadow Lord]

I run a solid myr and golem deck. All the splicers from the new set allow me to have dozens of golems with flying, trample, vigilance, the works. Then through in Etched Champion from Scars and Etched Monstrosity from New Phyrexia. The Myr allow my mana acceleration while I can blow holes in their health. Much faster then any Infect deck, and Etched Monstrosity is a 10/10 for 5 that allows you to drop his 5 -1/-1 and draw cards.

[wisdomseyes1]

Jun 8, 2011 14:27:55 GMT Psychichobo said:

I think your problem possibly is is that you're tying yourself down to a particular series, rather than exploring other sets. Haunt is a very awkward mechanic, and really you need something that works faster, against what is essentially an aggro deck.

Once again, I play every guild. The haunt guild is just the guild of the week.

Strangely, I built it last Sunday in like 5 minutes and told my friends that it was just a fun deck and would probably lose... apparently, it is very powerful, because of the passive and massive damage from bats, life loss, pillars of sleeplessness, infectious hosts, and if I am lucky--- Blazing archon *Troll face*

[beefchief117]

Just like what coff has been saying infect is really not the end of the world. Control control control! If you run counters, black or red kill spells, beast within, or white control you should be able to deal with just about everything that infect decks can throw down. Just wait for them to try and pump their creature (you do have to save some mana for this) and then just kill the creature wasting all their buffs as well as their creature.

The problem I have seen with infect decks is that you need to find the fine balance between creatures and pumps. For most infect decks if you simply kill all the creatures they play they are pretty much done for being as the rest of their hand is usually pumps and ramp. This is why I dont think much infect has made it into top decks due to its unreliability. Only nexus is really good at what it does as another optional win condition in decks.

I run a really nasty blue black infect that was only made better by the counterspells that they decided to give to infect players. Even though my deck has loads of flying unblockable creatures and spells a decent amount of control can completly shut me down. Its when they run out of control that they immediatly lose (or atleast against my deck :])

If you are not into control though do not fret, they announced that they were going to be going to a more creature based gameplay like back in the day. Which I am sure most people will enjoy alot more.