Around t5 you're going to be sitting on free mana pretty much for the rest of the game.
And that's why equipment is so beastly in infect. There are basically two ways of approaching the late-game that I've seen: you either get 4 to 6 pieces of equipment and make your creatures big enough or evasive enough to push through or you abandon the creature plan and ride to victory on proliferate and the occasional Plague Stinger still getting in there. Personally, I'm a huge fan of going for equipment, since it makes every single one of your creatures a live draw in the late game and uses your mana efficiently. Relying on Throne of Geth to finish them off is just too unreliable to me; the throne is pretty bad in the early game and, as always, it's the last poison counter that matters, so if you can't get your opponent to a high enough poison count, the throne does absolutely nothing. The weenie nature of poison creatures isn't something to ignore; it's something to take advantage of. The fact that infect has such a low curve and such small creatures makes equipment absolutely huge for pushing through the last few points.
Also, I forgot about Necropede. He's pretty beastly, though I'd honestly prefer Ichorclaw Myr over him, as it's a lot easier to get value that way, though necropede has much better potential for dealing with troublesome smiths.
Arbalest is totally fine. The non-untap clause isn't tied into the ability, just the equipment, so you can just re-equip to an untapped dude every turn. I mean, Razor Boomerang was marginally playable and the arbalest is just better; it's a source of repeatable damage that's difficult to disrupt.
Also, soliton with it is just completely nasty and comes very close to just auto-winning. It's like double Koth's ultimate for islands.
I've never managed to pick up a throne, though I'd certainly run it every time. The main problem with it is that it's really only good if you have no other way to close out the game, so it's comparable to (though better than) Lava Axe in that if you aren't already close to winning, it does nothing to close games out. The number of times where you won't be able to close the game without the throne, yet are close enough to win with the throne, is smaller than you might think. Still, 4-6 equipments in the deck and 1 throne is pretty nasty. Definitely a good card for the deck, though don't be surprised if you pick a throne over a Cystbearer and just fail to make anything happen.
The asp is bad because every one of the 2-drop infectors (Plague Stinger, Blight Mamba, and Ichorclaw Myr) is very, very good and forms the core of your early offense. A late-game vector asp is worse than any other late-game infector and if you have it turn one, likely as not it's not going to swing for a few turns because you're busy building up a board presence. If your deck is weak enough that you're completely relying on a huge Untamed Might, then vector asp becomes better because you're going for more of a combo kill where any infector will do. Otherwise, Vector Asp really shouldn't be run.
I say that Tel-Jilad Fallen is conditionally good because it's exactly that. It's the most expensive non-rare infector at 4 mana (with a decent commitment to green, which could be an issue) and trades with EVERYTHING that can block him, which you can't fix by pumping up his toughness with equipment. If you're running a deck with a good number of grasps and other removal, then he gets much better since you can just kill all their non-artifact dudes and swing in for the kill; he also gets much better with Bellowing Tanglewurm. The reason why I say that he's the worst green infector is because Blight Mamba and Cystbearer have much more general forms of evasion. It's ridiculously difficult to get rid of a Cystbearer in combat because there really isn't much stuff with 3+ power. Blight Mamba, barring the infect mirror, will always get you some value for 2 mana. The Fallen just doesn't have the consistency to reliably be excellent.
Contagious Nim is better than the goblin and worse than the rats, and worse than every green infector. The problem with the black infectors (other than Plague Stinger) is that they don't have any kind of evasion. You can't hope to just throw your nims and rats at the opponent and expect to come out ahead; you'll trade all your creatures for all of their creatures, and then they'll be at 2 poison counters and you'll have no board presence. A good metric for determining the value of an infector is how eagerly your opponent blocks your dude. They're going to throw their creatures in front of [card]contagious nim[card] every time, and be grateful for the chance to do so. Blight Mamba, ichorclaw myr, cystbearer, and plague stinger form the core of the deck because your opponent either cannot block them or doesn't want to block them, allowing both players to build up a board presence on either side of the field, eventually resulting in you having blight mambas and cystbearers with good equipment and them with a field of dudes that have done nothing all game and 5-8 poison counters.
Accorder's Shield is playable, but the problem is that equipment is a nombo with other equipment; you only have so much mana to throw around. Paying 3 to equip is a lot, and the only thing you're doing is turning a Contagious Nim into a sort of Cystbearer at the cost of two cards and a lot of mana. Vigilance is almost irrelevant, since you really don't care if they're attacking, as their clock is going to be way slower than yours. It's playable, but situational and expensive where other equipments can do a lot more for less investment. If you already have 4+ other good equipment, I'd leave it in the sideboard and bring it in against decks that are actually capable of racing you.
The problem I've had with Accorder's Shield is that, if things are going to plan, you won't be blocking. Save for the infect mirror, it's never come down to a ground race. Of the three games I've lost playing infect (out of 9 matches), one was to the infect mirror where he had more corpse curs and I never had an unblocked creature to blow him out, one was to double furnace celebration quadruple white spellbomb where I drew one infect creature and all 4 pieces of equipment, and one was to mono-red who burned all my creatures and had that first-striking golem to hold off my attacks. The latter case is really the only game where the shield would have made a significant difference. I've always started the shield (had it after both my infect drafts) and I always cut it for something else, since my infect decks so far really don't create board states where the shield is useful.
A well-built infect deck won't need tainted strike, as going the direction of huge dudes with conditional infect has a lot more variance than just playing more infect. I can see it working, though. I've just never had a deck that had any non-infect creature larger than a tanglewurm, and if I have that out, I've probably already won.
Infiltration lens seems promising enough to try out. I've never been impressed when it has been played against me since I've always been the one swinging for the fences, but it does make combat incredibly rough for your opponent.
I've had a lot of success drafting infect, and I've decided to run out a bunch of ideas on the archetype partly because I like bouncing ideas off of other people to see if they work (my own experience constitutes a ridiculously small sample size) and partly because I think it's helpful for me to try and commit my strategy to words so that I can better understand it. That said, let's get to why infect is worth drafting:
I. Behold the Power of Destruction
Infect is a very unique draft mechanic in that it completely changes the mechanics of drafting and playing, but unlike previous such archetypes (Mill comes to mind), there is a lot of support for it, to the point where you honestly don't need to get lucky to pull it off in my experience. Drafting infect means that your pick orders are going to be wildly different from other decks to the point where you're going to be getting relevant picks well into packs. Who else would want an Ichorclaw Myr? I'm totally confident that a draft table can support 3 dedicated infect drafters, as the card pool for the archetype is far deeper than stuff with "infect" on it.
Probably the greatest strength of the archetype comes during gameplay. I have no experience drafting a controlling infect deck (though I'd love to try out U/G or U/B one of these days), and every infect deck I've seen is extremely aggressive. Infect is crazy good at being aggressive, simply because it's virtually impossible to race. Infect has three one-power two drops at common (all quality) and two two-power three drops also at common. if the two drops connect (which they tend to do, as they all have some kind of pseudo-evasion), then they hit harder than a bear, as there is no life gain for poison; once you're hit, you've been hit. With the exception of Contagious Nim, each of the common 2-to-3 cost infectors are insanely difficult to block: Plague Stinger flies, Cystbearer is incredibly difficult to block in this weenie-centered format, etc. There is simply no aggro deck that can keep up with poison. Winning at 10 counters just feels like cheating.
As for against controlling decks, infect is far better than any metalcraft deck I've yet seen. Metalcraft requires you to have three artifacts and at least one thing with metalcraft in order to mean anything at all, while a single creature with infect represents a complete blowout. This being Mirrodin, artifact removal is quite common; white has revoke existence, red has shatter and Oxidda Scrapmelter, and green has Slice in Twain and Sylvok Replica, all of which have far more relevance against metalcraft than infect. The only thing that works against infect is creature removal, and the set has noticeably sparse creature removal, and with the exception of Arc Trail, it's all pretty much one-for-one unless you meet some very specific criteria (Dispense Justice, Turn to Slag). There is simply no easy way to take advantage of the relatively low stats of infect creatures; there is no pyroclasm or comparable sweeper common enough to pose any serious threat. It's a lot easier to hate out metalcraft than infect due to the low density of creature removal, and so people will be far quicker to pick up on stuff that hates out the more popular mechanic of metalcraft.
II. A Display of My Dark Power
So let's take a closer look and examine an infect deck (mine, of course) to see what makes a good infect deck; I ran this to a 6-0 finish at my local release (50 or so players), drafting at a pod of 8 and playing cross-pod.
So let's make a couple points about the deck as a whole:
I was cut from black. The Grasp was P1P1 and the only other good black card I saw the whole draft was a P2P4 grasp in the same pack as a (foil!) contagion clasp and a Nim Deathmantle, which I picked over it since it's a rare that I wanted to assess and I thought that keeping my options for a second color open was more important than whatever slight upgrade the grasp would be. Black was cut from both sides and I ended up mono-green splashing for removal, and the deck turned out to be absolutely stellar.
There are no huge generic bombs. The Asceticism was decent enough, but occasionally useless and of basically no use in the infect mirror, and the Bellowing Tanglewurm, despite being at its best here than in any other infect-based deck, was solid, but conditional enough to just not make a difference half the time I drew it (though it did win me the other half). There was no Putrefax, no Hand of the Praetors, no Bonerdagon. Every single game was won off of the hard work of Cystbearers and Ichorclaw Myr and associated synergies.
That said, the deck had a pretty excellent balance of elements that made the deck insanely consistent in both the early and late game.
Looking back at the list, the first block of cards make up the obvious core of the deck: creatures with infect. Notably, there are only 9, meaning that the deck has exactly 9 cards (plus the exoskeleton on a non-infect dude) that are capable of winning the game. I would gladly have played more of any of the infect dudes in the deck, but nine proved to be a totally reasonable number to have in pretty much every matchup. There's no need to have 14+ infect creatures to make the deck work, and the low amount of actual infect needed to make the deck work well convinces me that a table can easily support 2 if not 3 infect drafters. I'll get to the individual creatures in the next big section.
The second block is the equipment, and 4 seemed like the minimum to have an infect deck with a resilient late game. Equipment is insanely important for infect because it both provides late-game resiliency and early game pressure, and it's really no huge drain on mana since your curve is so low. The predominance of 1/1s, 2/1s, 1/3s, etc. in the format makes even +1/+1 incredibly relevant. Every power-boosting equipment does double duty, and every evasion-granting equipment has the potential to close out games really quickly.
Lastly, there are the support cards. Infect can make as much use of Horizon Spellbombs and Copper Myrs as any other deck, and removal is just as good as always. Infect really does not substantially constrict your card pool; there are far more cards that are made better in an infect deck than cards that are made worse. Untamed Might is really the only card here that is made much better by infect, and Copper Myr the only card that is made significantly worse, and that's only because the deck relied on its 2 and 3 drops to make much use of a myr. Neither was I the only green drafter at the table, though I'd guess my only competition was a single non-infect drafter, which is to be expected when both of your neighbors are cutting black infect and you're cutting the green.
The games played out incredibly consistently. Turn 2 mamba or ichorclaw myr into turn 3 cystbearer was not only common, but basically unbeatable. Blowouts with Untamed Might happened perhaps twice out of twelve wins; the rest was just me playing dudes, attacking, playing equipment, and aggroing my opponent out. I was extremely pleased with the deck, only dropping 2 games the entire tournament.
III. Rotted Ones, Lay Siege
Now for individual card evaluations. I'm not going to cover cards that are either just bad in an infect deck (Moriok Reaver) or don't gain anything significant by being in an infect deck (Grasp of Darkness), or cards that I simply don't have enough experience with to evaluate. Starting with black:
Blackcleave Goblin: Filler, but not bad at it. If you don't have enough infect creatures or if your late-game is lacking, then he's fine. Otherwise, he's far from great, though solid. He gets better the faster your deck needs to be in order to win.
Contagious Nim: Deceptive in that he seems to be the stereotypically average infect creature when in fact he's one of the worse ones. Two toughness trades a lot in this format (it's shaping up to be like Zendikar limited in terms of average creature size), and the biggest weakness of infect decks that I've seen is that you can't just trade your creatures one-for-one. Trades need to be in your favor in order to win battles of attrition, and this guy simply doesn't have anything built-in to do that. As with the worse infect creatures, he gets better the faster your deck is trying to be, since you're trading away long-term advantages to try to close out games before that will be an issue.
Hand of the Praetors: Pretty obvious bomb, no matter how your deck is set up to run. There's really no subtlety in his strength. Always take him if you're drafting infect, barring any sort of rare/mythic foil you might want to take more.
Ichor Rats: Solid, and like the other black infectors so far, he gets better as your deck gets faster. The bad part is that he trades with everything, so as games go long, his utility decreases significantly.
Plague Stinger: The best non-rare black infector. This is what you want to be playing on turn 2, every game. More than any other infector, he is just insane with equipment and is an incredibly reliable and fast clock. Unfortunately, he carries a fair amount of variance in that both white and blue are able to deal with plague stinger without excessive effort. It's not to say that he ever becomes bad; he's just so much better against decks that don't run 2/2 fliers.
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon: Very much a windmill-slam, even in most non-infect decks. Always the best card in the pack, barring something like a foil masticore.
Tainted Strike: It has sat in my sideboard every draft, and while it isn't going to be excellent, it can be brought in to shore up numbers and provide a bit of extra reach. I suspect that it would be better in a more controlling infect deck, simply because you're more likely to play Neurok Invisimancer and flyers that don't otherwise have infect.
Black's contributions tend to be unimpressive, as all the non-rare creatures save plague singer trade very easily, and the last thing you want is for your opponent to be able to trade favorably. Decks heavier on black are going to want as many infect creatures as possible and as much removal as possible, with equipment being less important, as your board presence will dwindle quickly and you will need to replace your losses and just run your opponent out of creatures. Think Zendikar. Now, on to green:
Asceticism: Pretty bad in the mirror, but remarkably effective as games go long. Blight Mamba is good for a reason, and this card basically makes every combat step go in your favor, as your board presence can only increase and theirs can only wither away. Unfortunately, it requires a significant mana investment for something that doesn't just win the game, though it gives a pretty good deal regardless.
Bellowing Tanglewurm: Solid at best and pretty terrible at worst, this guy depends heavily on your creature base. There are only four green infectors, so you're going to want a lot of them before this guy becomes good enough. Intimidate is worse in this set than any other, though he combos pretty well with Tel-Jilad Fallen.
Blight Mamba: This guy is a pretty good infector, though I'd put him behind the other two common 2-drop infectors. He's difficult to block in the early game since most early creatures tend to have one toughness, and swing-kill-regen is just all value. One of the best infectors to have in the late game, since he just picks up equipment and relentlessly beats face. Also transitions well to defense.
Carrion Call: I've never played with it yet, though it seems totally fine. It's telegraphed pretty hard, so don't rely on surprising your opponent with it. Generally worse than most of the other green infect stuff, and I'd take equipment over it, though if it ends up in my pile, I'll play it every time.
Cystbearer: Totally insane. You know how Nissa's Chosen was one of the best green cards back in Zendikar limited? As it turns out, being a 2/3 is just as good now as it was then. 2/1s are extremely common (Smiths come to mind[/card]), and this guy is incredibly difficult to block profitably. He essentially gets chumped or hits for 4; pretty dang good for a three-drop. At best, your opponent can hope to trade evenly. Playing a turn 3 cystbearer is one of the best feelings in the format.
Putrefax: Very good, though I'm not sure how good. I have yet to play with it, though I'd probably take it over any other card in the pack in this archetype, if only to try it out.
Tangle Angler: I have yet to see one at the draft tables, but it seems pretty amazing. Great at picking off smiths and clearing the way for your other dudes. Lure in a deck with equipment and creatures that hit for double is incredibly good.
Tel-Jilad Fallen: Solid, but swingy. Conditionally great on offense and defense, but has a huge weakness in that he can't be equipped. I'd run him every time, though I can definitely anticipate games where he just does nothing. Probably the worst of the green infectors.
Untamed Might: Easily the card with the most potential for a blowout, this has won me many games from out of nowhere. Just having this card in your deck forces your opponent into extremely awkward situations, since a single unblocked creature can mean game over. This gives the poison deck incredible reach and will probably be the best non-creature you will have in your deck. Unfortunately, it's not terribly useful when your opponent is at 8 poison counters and you're just trying to push through, though it'll still be a Smite, which isn't the worst.
Green is my favorite base for the deck since it just has so much resilience and potential for complete blowouts. Of course, no infect deck is complete without some artifacts, and this is really the category where you can pick up some incredibly powerful stuff.
Accorder's Shield: I haven't been impressed, as the shield really doesn't do much for you. You're not going to be making use of metalcraft and most of your infect guys should be resilient enough not to need the extra toughness. You're going to be the aggro deck pretty much every time, so vigilance simply is not very useful; if they're swinging, then they're in a losing race anyway, so why discourage them? Better on Contagious Nims and other infect creatures that could use the resiliency.
Bladed Pinions: Both of the abilities are incredibly relevant on an infect creature; first strike has always been excellent with wither. A solid piece of equipment, though it suffers in that it doesn't make your clock any faster, just harder to stop.
Contagion Clasp: Very solid, for reasons that should be obvious. Complements the black-based deck better, since it's removal that gives the deck inevitability in the late game, both of which are quite important there.
Corpse Cur: Strictly better Gravedigger seems pretty broken to me. This guy gives an incredible leg up in the attrition war and should be a high pick in every infect deck.
Darksteel Axe: One of the best pieces of equipment to get. It's cheap and shortens the clock quite effectively.
Grafted Exoskeleton: Also a very solid piece of equipment, and better in infect than anywhere else. The drawback has yet to come up for me, and +2/+2 for an equip cost of 2 is one of the best deals out there. Turning a myr into a 3/3 infector is just good value.
Heavy Arbalest: Provides a lot of value for a single card. The damage comes from the creature, so you can just equip to all your creatures in succession and poison the opponent out in short order. It's a very slow way of closing out games, but it's very effective at what it does. Much better if your creatures stick around, since having only one or two creatures out makes it a lot worse.
Ichorclaw Myr: Secretly one of the best cards in the infect deck. This guy is basically impossible to block profitably. The cheapest thing he trades with is Moriok Reaver, and besides trading with 3-power dudes, from turn 3 on he either gets in for one or gets chumped. Probably better than [/card]Blight Mamba[/card]. Get your hands on as many as possible, since this guy on turn 2 is virtually impossible to answer. Only Cystbearer and Plague Singer beat him out in the common slot. Judging by my opponent's expressions, this is the card you least want to face on turn 2.
Necropede: Seems very solid, though you may not see any since he's one of the better infect cards in crossing over to non-infect decks.
Nim Deathmantle: Expensive, but pretty close to unbeatable. +2/+2, evasion, and recursion on a 2-cost equipment is really all you could ask for.
Trigon of Rage: A good card in any deck, it's an outright bomb in infect. Threatening +3/+0 on any creature they don't block is extremely powerful.
IV. Embrace My Diabolical Vision
Hopefully I've convinced someone to try out infect at their next draft. All signs point to Scars limited being all about drafting coherent decks and not just "good stuff", and I fully plan on forcing infect from here on out simply because it's the only deck that I know how to draft well. That said, I'd love to hear experiences in sealed and draft about the viability of infect and new directions the archetype can take.
All these people and their unnecessarily complex god hands...
T1 joraga treespeaker
T2 level up, chalice for one
T3 titan, find eye of ugin and temple
T4 swing, find two more temples, tutor up emrakul
T5 cast emrakul
And you only need to hit four land drops. Heck, you only need three if you naturally draw into a temple. If they kill your titan, then you can settle for finding ulamog or kozilek, or just casting them on turn 4 if you naturally draw into them. The weakest part of this is that if they have a bolt for your treespeaker, it can be difficult to come back, but even a single growth spasm allows for turn 4 titan with nothing else save land drops. And this is an entirely realistic god hand; the only assumptions we're making is you have all untapped lands (easy enough in mono-green), your first land is a forest, and you have a treespeaker on turn one, a chalice (or overgrown battlements, or any other 1-2 mana accelerant) on turn 2, and the titan on turn three. Burn and terminate are the only truly good answers to treespeaker, anyway; this is too fast for a wrath effect, condemn doesn't hit treespeaker, planeswalkers are too slow, path delays you only one turn, etc. etc.
Running mono-green eldrazi (or any kind of eldrazi ramp) has always been sub-par, in my opinion. So many people see stuff like eye of ugin and eldrazi temple and assume that the archetype is viable simply because it has some support cards. My GW summoning trap deck was changed into mono-green eldrazi two hours after this guy's spoiler came out. Having a deck with eight must-counter 6-drops is pretty ridiculous when you can dedicate 15+ slots to getting said six-drops out by turn four.
This guy has singlehandedly inspired two decklists, lost me 3 hours of sleep, and made the time until M11's release seem far longer than it used to be. He's all I can think about. He is invading my dreams. This is why I love Magic.
Also, here goes another set where I put off playing a real deck and instead play an objectively worse deck of my own design of which I am intensely proud. Now stop jacking up his price so I can afford four of them.
The crux of the matter is that everyone plays for different reasons, and any decision to drop is based on those reasons. If you're a casual player who is having fun at the prerelease after going 0-2, then there's nothing wrong with staying in and continuing to have fun. For a competitive player who primarily wants prizes or is trying to boost their rating or what-have you, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with dropping to draft.
If a casual player wants to drop from a tournament halfway through so he can jump in a game of EDH with his friends, should he be penalized for not seeing the tournament through? I'd wager that we'd see a huge drop in tournament attendance if that were so.
I just broke 1800 in limited, and I can't recall a single tournament where I have dropped, and that's not because I think that it's at all "wrong" to drop or whatever; I just have a particular purpose in mind when I go to an event, and that purpose usually doesn't require dropping if I'm doing badly. I do care about my rating, but for the most part, I go to a tournament to have fun first, become a better player second, and get prizes and rating third. For people who have prizes and rating as their primary motivation (and getting prizes may be the most fun thing about Magic for them, which is a personal preference more than anything), then there's no reason to punish them by making them play Magic and not have fun or lose rating.
If you go to FNM or whatever other tournament your store runs, you're mostly going to see people whose primary enjoyment comes from winning, and the pursuit thereof. That's how I play every Friday night, and I enjoy it.
At my university, there are a couple dozen people who just play for fun and bring casual, EDH, what-have-you to the table and just play to have fun between classes.
It's not a problem with Magic, it's a problem with your playgroup. One of the things to understand about Magic is that not everyone plays the same game. If you're playing against someone who wants something out of the game that you don't share, then you're not going to have fun. Go find a casual group, and stop playing at FNM.
Luminarch really just isn't playable here. You have no blockers aside from a hardcast glassdust hulk, and no way to avoid damage other than angelsongs, not to mention that your opponent likely won't be getting too many turns once you go off. You want to go off by turn 5 or 6, and that's the bare minimum for luminarch to be active under ideal conditions.
I like the idea of pilgrim's eye, and I'm not even sure that glassdust is necessary as a win condition. I'm debating between 3 spreading seas and 2 tezzeret or 4 glassdust and 1 tezzeret. You can already win with jace, and glassdust seems kind of vulnerable. Also, spreading seas is sick against jund, decent against vampires on the play, and neutralizes those manlands, which seem to be all the rage these days. Personally, I'm seeing virtually no RDW or boros in my meta, which puts the rest for the weary into the side and generally places time seive in a pretty strong position.
I also want to test a creatureless version (so the spreading seas plan) sideboarding into 4x lodestone golem, though I doubt it'll be good enough. Still, golem is great against a lot of decks out there, and getting one turn 3 off a chalice against an opponent who sided out their removal is pretty sick.
Also, I'm not liking halimar depths in the few games I've played. Its only synergy is with shuffle effects, and you generally will be using all your mana every turn. Considering we already run 8 CipT mana sources, it doesn't seem to provide enough benefit for the opportunity cost.
My list, just in case anyone's interested in seeing yet another build of the same deck.
I've been drafting about once a week since M10's release, and have not bought any sealed product in that time. I'm also a very good drafter, so I can regularly go 2-1 and 3-0 in draft, which makes drafting not a waste of money. I have about 15 fetches, 3 baneslayers, and I'm working towards getting my hands on a few Jaces. I've also not bought any Magic single worth more than $5 in a very long time.
If you're consistently good at drafting, then it can be a really good way to make money, and I highly recommend it over buying sealed product. If you aren't good at drafting, then draft anyway, since it's probably the best way to get better at Magic. I went from a guy with johnny decks that goes 2-2 every week to one of the best limited players in the store with enough of a collection (and enough good friends) to build just about any standard deck I want. I got 2 BSAs from drafting (in consecutive drafts, no less), my good friend pulled a third that he'll loan me whenever, and I know at least half a dozen people who would let me borrow the fourth for any given tournament. My only significant expense has come from drafting every week, which is paid for pretty dang fast if you just stay away from buying boxes and packs.
I just managed to convince myself not to build a deck, mostly because it's bad. As it turns out, amulet of vigor is not good enough to bring back time seive, even if we get chalice and lodestone golem and replace the flasks with spreading seas.
To be honest, I've been wanting to netdeck for a while, but never was interested enough in a deck to do so early enough to matter. So I'm basically going to hawk channelfireball until LSV posts a good decklist that is not Grixis, then run it for the foreseeable future.
Went 5-1 with a relatively slow BR deck with dragonmaster outcast and hellkite charger and late-game bombs. My loss was to a faster BR deck with a strong ally theme (the 1/1 hasties that give allies +1/+0 proved to be quite good for him), and the last round was to another BR deck. I'm fairly sure that BR remains the strongest archetype, though I haven't drafted yet. Pretty much all my friends dropped to draft after a few rounds, and I couldn't stay for the draft after the sealed event. Quite fun, and I do really like the set.
Pulled two of the manlands, a persecutor, and a misty rainforest. Some other guy pulled a foil Jace.
Our FNM just has 4 rounds of swiss (no top 8) with store credit for the victors such that I doubt the store makes a profit off of the entry fees. We have about 12-20 per standard FNM. We also have a draft pod (sometimes 2) that usually pays 4-5 packs to the winner and 1 or 2 if you go 2-1, depending on place.
I like the idea of running both standard and draft at the same time; twice the number of winners, really.
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And that's why equipment is so beastly in infect. There are basically two ways of approaching the late-game that I've seen: you either get 4 to 6 pieces of equipment and make your creatures big enough or evasive enough to push through or you abandon the creature plan and ride to victory on proliferate and the occasional Plague Stinger still getting in there. Personally, I'm a huge fan of going for equipment, since it makes every single one of your creatures a live draw in the late game and uses your mana efficiently. Relying on Throne of Geth to finish them off is just too unreliable to me; the throne is pretty bad in the early game and, as always, it's the last poison counter that matters, so if you can't get your opponent to a high enough poison count, the throne does absolutely nothing. The weenie nature of poison creatures isn't something to ignore; it's something to take advantage of. The fact that infect has such a low curve and such small creatures makes equipment absolutely huge for pushing through the last few points.
Also, I forgot about Necropede. He's pretty beastly, though I'd honestly prefer Ichorclaw Myr over him, as it's a lot easier to get value that way, though necropede has much better potential for dealing with troublesome smiths.
Also, soliton with it is just completely nasty and comes very close to just auto-winning. It's like double Koth's ultimate for islands.
The asp is bad because every one of the 2-drop infectors (Plague Stinger, Blight Mamba, and Ichorclaw Myr) is very, very good and forms the core of your early offense. A late-game vector asp is worse than any other late-game infector and if you have it turn one, likely as not it's not going to swing for a few turns because you're busy building up a board presence. If your deck is weak enough that you're completely relying on a huge Untamed Might, then vector asp becomes better because you're going for more of a combo kill where any infector will do. Otherwise, Vector Asp really shouldn't be run.
I say that Tel-Jilad Fallen is conditionally good because it's exactly that. It's the most expensive non-rare infector at 4 mana (with a decent commitment to green, which could be an issue) and trades with EVERYTHING that can block him, which you can't fix by pumping up his toughness with equipment. If you're running a deck with a good number of grasps and other removal, then he gets much better since you can just kill all their non-artifact dudes and swing in for the kill; he also gets much better with Bellowing Tanglewurm. The reason why I say that he's the worst green infector is because Blight Mamba and Cystbearer have much more general forms of evasion. It's ridiculously difficult to get rid of a Cystbearer in combat because there really isn't much stuff with 3+ power. Blight Mamba, barring the infect mirror, will always get you some value for 2 mana. The Fallen just doesn't have the consistency to reliably be excellent.
Contagious Nim is better than the goblin and worse than the rats, and worse than every green infector. The problem with the black infectors (other than Plague Stinger) is that they don't have any kind of evasion. You can't hope to just throw your nims and rats at the opponent and expect to come out ahead; you'll trade all your creatures for all of their creatures, and then they'll be at 2 poison counters and you'll have no board presence. A good metric for determining the value of an infector is how eagerly your opponent blocks your dude. They're going to throw their creatures in front of [card]contagious nim[card] every time, and be grateful for the chance to do so. Blight Mamba, ichorclaw myr, cystbearer, and plague stinger form the core of the deck because your opponent either cannot block them or doesn't want to block them, allowing both players to build up a board presence on either side of the field, eventually resulting in you having blight mambas and cystbearers with good equipment and them with a field of dudes that have done nothing all game and 5-8 poison counters.
Accorder's Shield is playable, but the problem is that equipment is a nombo with other equipment; you only have so much mana to throw around. Paying 3 to equip is a lot, and the only thing you're doing is turning a Contagious Nim into a sort of Cystbearer at the cost of two cards and a lot of mana. Vigilance is almost irrelevant, since you really don't care if they're attacking, as their clock is going to be way slower than yours. It's playable, but situational and expensive where other equipments can do a lot more for less investment. If you already have 4+ other good equipment, I'd leave it in the sideboard and bring it in against decks that are actually capable of racing you.
A well-built infect deck won't need tainted strike, as going the direction of huge dudes with conditional infect has a lot more variance than just playing more infect. I can see it working, though. I've just never had a deck that had any non-infect creature larger than a tanglewurm, and if I have that out, I've probably already won.
Infiltration lens seems promising enough to try out. I've never been impressed when it has been played against me since I've always been the one swinging for the fences, but it does make combat incredibly rough for your opponent.
I. Behold the Power of Destruction
Infect is a very unique draft mechanic in that it completely changes the mechanics of drafting and playing, but unlike previous such archetypes (Mill comes to mind), there is a lot of support for it, to the point where you honestly don't need to get lucky to pull it off in my experience. Drafting infect means that your pick orders are going to be wildly different from other decks to the point where you're going to be getting relevant picks well into packs. Who else would want an Ichorclaw Myr? I'm totally confident that a draft table can support 3 dedicated infect drafters, as the card pool for the archetype is far deeper than stuff with "infect" on it.
Probably the greatest strength of the archetype comes during gameplay. I have no experience drafting a controlling infect deck (though I'd love to try out U/G or U/B one of these days), and every infect deck I've seen is extremely aggressive. Infect is crazy good at being aggressive, simply because it's virtually impossible to race. Infect has three one-power two drops at common (all quality) and two two-power three drops also at common. if the two drops connect (which they tend to do, as they all have some kind of pseudo-evasion), then they hit harder than a bear, as there is no life gain for poison; once you're hit, you've been hit. With the exception of Contagious Nim, each of the common 2-to-3 cost infectors are insanely difficult to block: Plague Stinger flies, Cystbearer is incredibly difficult to block in this weenie-centered format, etc. There is simply no aggro deck that can keep up with poison. Winning at 10 counters just feels like cheating.
As for against controlling decks, infect is far better than any metalcraft deck I've yet seen. Metalcraft requires you to have three artifacts and at least one thing with metalcraft in order to mean anything at all, while a single creature with infect represents a complete blowout. This being Mirrodin, artifact removal is quite common; white has revoke existence, red has shatter and Oxidda Scrapmelter, and green has Slice in Twain and Sylvok Replica, all of which have far more relevance against metalcraft than infect. The only thing that works against infect is creature removal, and the set has noticeably sparse creature removal, and with the exception of Arc Trail, it's all pretty much one-for-one unless you meet some very specific criteria (Dispense Justice, Turn to Slag). There is simply no easy way to take advantage of the relatively low stats of infect creatures; there is no pyroclasm or comparable sweeper common enough to pose any serious threat. It's a lot easier to hate out metalcraft than infect due to the low density of creature removal, and so people will be far quicker to pick up on stuff that hates out the more popular mechanic of metalcraft.
II. A Display of My Dark Power
So let's take a closer look and examine an infect deck (mine, of course) to see what makes a good infect deck; I ran this to a 6-0 finish at my local release (50 or so players), drafting at a pod of 8 and playing cross-pod.
1 Corpse Cur
3 Cystbearer
2 Ichorclaw Myr
1 Tel-Jilad Fallen
1 Bladed Pinions
1 Grafted Exoskeleton
1 Nim Deathmantle
1 Strider Harness
1 Bellowing Tanglewurm
1 Copper Myr
1 Grasp of Darkness
1 Horizon Spellbomb
1 Instill Infection
2 Sylvok Replica
2 Untamed Might
7 Swamp
So let's make a couple points about the deck as a whole:
I was cut from black. The Grasp was P1P1 and the only other good black card I saw the whole draft was a P2P4 grasp in the same pack as a (foil!) contagion clasp and a Nim Deathmantle, which I picked over it since it's a rare that I wanted to assess and I thought that keeping my options for a second color open was more important than whatever slight upgrade the grasp would be. Black was cut from both sides and I ended up mono-green splashing for removal, and the deck turned out to be absolutely stellar.
There are no huge generic bombs. The Asceticism was decent enough, but occasionally useless and of basically no use in the infect mirror, and the Bellowing Tanglewurm, despite being at its best here than in any other infect-based deck, was solid, but conditional enough to just not make a difference half the time I drew it (though it did win me the other half). There was no Putrefax, no Hand of the Praetors, no Bonerdagon. Every single game was won off of the hard work of Cystbearers and Ichorclaw Myr and associated synergies.
That said, the deck had a pretty excellent balance of elements that made the deck insanely consistent in both the early and late game.
Looking back at the list, the first block of cards make up the obvious core of the deck: creatures with infect. Notably, there are only 9, meaning that the deck has exactly 9 cards (plus the exoskeleton on a non-infect dude) that are capable of winning the game. I would gladly have played more of any of the infect dudes in the deck, but nine proved to be a totally reasonable number to have in pretty much every matchup. There's no need to have 14+ infect creatures to make the deck work, and the low amount of actual infect needed to make the deck work well convinces me that a table can easily support 2 if not 3 infect drafters. I'll get to the individual creatures in the next big section.
The second block is the equipment, and 4 seemed like the minimum to have an infect deck with a resilient late game. Equipment is insanely important for infect because it both provides late-game resiliency and early game pressure, and it's really no huge drain on mana since your curve is so low. The predominance of 1/1s, 2/1s, 1/3s, etc. in the format makes even +1/+1 incredibly relevant. Every power-boosting equipment does double duty, and every evasion-granting equipment has the potential to close out games really quickly.
Lastly, there are the support cards. Infect can make as much use of Horizon Spellbombs and Copper Myrs as any other deck, and removal is just as good as always. Infect really does not substantially constrict your card pool; there are far more cards that are made better in an infect deck than cards that are made worse. Untamed Might is really the only card here that is made much better by infect, and Copper Myr the only card that is made significantly worse, and that's only because the deck relied on its 2 and 3 drops to make much use of a myr. Neither was I the only green drafter at the table, though I'd guess my only competition was a single non-infect drafter, which is to be expected when both of your neighbors are cutting black infect and you're cutting the green.
The games played out incredibly consistently. Turn 2 mamba or ichorclaw myr into turn 3 cystbearer was not only common, but basically unbeatable. Blowouts with Untamed Might happened perhaps twice out of twelve wins; the rest was just me playing dudes, attacking, playing equipment, and aggroing my opponent out. I was extremely pleased with the deck, only dropping 2 games the entire tournament.
III. Rotted Ones, Lay Siege
Now for individual card evaluations. I'm not going to cover cards that are either just bad in an infect deck (Moriok Reaver) or don't gain anything significant by being in an infect deck (Grasp of Darkness), or cards that I simply don't have enough experience with to evaluate. Starting with black:
Contagious Nim: Deceptive in that he seems to be the stereotypically average infect creature when in fact he's one of the worse ones. Two toughness trades a lot in this format (it's shaping up to be like Zendikar limited in terms of average creature size), and the biggest weakness of infect decks that I've seen is that you can't just trade your creatures one-for-one. Trades need to be in your favor in order to win battles of attrition, and this guy simply doesn't have anything built-in to do that. As with the worse infect creatures, he gets better the faster your deck is trying to be, since you're trading away long-term advantages to try to close out games before that will be an issue.
Hand of the Praetors: Pretty obvious bomb, no matter how your deck is set up to run. There's really no subtlety in his strength. Always take him if you're drafting infect, barring any sort of rare/mythic foil you might want to take more.
Ichor Rats: Solid, and like the other black infectors so far, he gets better as your deck gets faster. The bad part is that he trades with everything, so as games go long, his utility decreases significantly.
Plague Stinger: The best non-rare black infector. This is what you want to be playing on turn 2, every game. More than any other infector, he is just insane with equipment and is an incredibly reliable and fast clock. Unfortunately, he carries a fair amount of variance in that both white and blue are able to deal with plague stinger without excessive effort. It's not to say that he ever becomes bad; he's just so much better against decks that don't run 2/2 fliers.
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon: Very much a windmill-slam, even in most non-infect decks. Always the best card in the pack, barring something like a foil masticore.
Tainted Strike: It has sat in my sideboard every draft, and while it isn't going to be excellent, it can be brought in to shore up numbers and provide a bit of extra reach. I suspect that it would be better in a more controlling infect deck, simply because you're more likely to play Neurok Invisimancer and flyers that don't otherwise have infect.
Bellowing Tanglewurm: Solid at best and pretty terrible at worst, this guy depends heavily on your creature base. There are only four green infectors, so you're going to want a lot of them before this guy becomes good enough. Intimidate is worse in this set than any other, though he combos pretty well with Tel-Jilad Fallen.
Blight Mamba: This guy is a pretty good infector, though I'd put him behind the other two common 2-drop infectors. He's difficult to block in the early game since most early creatures tend to have one toughness, and swing-kill-regen is just all value. One of the best infectors to have in the late game, since he just picks up equipment and relentlessly beats face. Also transitions well to defense.
Carrion Call: I've never played with it yet, though it seems totally fine. It's telegraphed pretty hard, so don't rely on surprising your opponent with it. Generally worse than most of the other green infect stuff, and I'd take equipment over it, though if it ends up in my pile, I'll play it every time.
Cystbearer: Totally insane. You know how Nissa's Chosen was one of the best green cards back in Zendikar limited? As it turns out, being a 2/3 is just as good now as it was then. 2/1s are extremely common (Smiths come to mind[/card]), and this guy is incredibly difficult to block profitably. He essentially gets chumped or hits for 4; pretty dang good for a three-drop. At best, your opponent can hope to trade evenly. Playing a turn 3 cystbearer is one of the best feelings in the format.
Putrefax: Very good, though I'm not sure how good. I have yet to play with it, though I'd probably take it over any other card in the pack in this archetype, if only to try it out.
Tangle Angler: I have yet to see one at the draft tables, but it seems pretty amazing. Great at picking off smiths and clearing the way for your other dudes. Lure in a deck with equipment and creatures that hit for double is incredibly good.
Tel-Jilad Fallen: Solid, but swingy. Conditionally great on offense and defense, but has a huge weakness in that he can't be equipped. I'd run him every time, though I can definitely anticipate games where he just does nothing. Probably the worst of the green infectors.
Untamed Might: Easily the card with the most potential for a blowout, this has won me many games from out of nowhere. Just having this card in your deck forces your opponent into extremely awkward situations, since a single unblocked creature can mean game over. This gives the poison deck incredible reach and will probably be the best non-creature you will have in your deck. Unfortunately, it's not terribly useful when your opponent is at 8 poison counters and you're just trying to push through, though it'll still be a Smite, which isn't the worst.
Accorder's Shield: I haven't been impressed, as the shield really doesn't do much for you. You're not going to be making use of metalcraft and most of your infect guys should be resilient enough not to need the extra toughness. You're going to be the aggro deck pretty much every time, so vigilance simply is not very useful; if they're swinging, then they're in a losing race anyway, so why discourage them? Better on Contagious Nims and other infect creatures that could use the resiliency.
Bladed Pinions: Both of the abilities are incredibly relevant on an infect creature; first strike has always been excellent with wither. A solid piece of equipment, though it suffers in that it doesn't make your clock any faster, just harder to stop.
Contagion Clasp: Very solid, for reasons that should be obvious. Complements the black-based deck better, since it's removal that gives the deck inevitability in the late game, both of which are quite important there.
Corpse Cur: Strictly better Gravedigger seems pretty broken to me. This guy gives an incredible leg up in the attrition war and should be a high pick in every infect deck.
Darksteel Axe: One of the best pieces of equipment to get. It's cheap and shortens the clock quite effectively.
Grafted Exoskeleton: Also a very solid piece of equipment, and better in infect than anywhere else. The drawback has yet to come up for me, and +2/+2 for an equip cost of 2 is one of the best deals out there. Turning a myr into a 3/3 infector is just good value.
Heavy Arbalest: Provides a lot of value for a single card. The damage comes from the creature, so you can just equip to all your creatures in succession and poison the opponent out in short order. It's a very slow way of closing out games, but it's very effective at what it does. Much better if your creatures stick around, since having only one or two creatures out makes it a lot worse.
Ichorclaw Myr: Secretly one of the best cards in the infect deck. This guy is basically impossible to block profitably. The cheapest thing he trades with is Moriok Reaver, and besides trading with 3-power dudes, from turn 3 on he either gets in for one or gets chumped. Probably better than [/card]Blight Mamba[/card]. Get your hands on as many as possible, since this guy on turn 2 is virtually impossible to answer. Only Cystbearer and Plague Singer beat him out in the common slot. Judging by my opponent's expressions, this is the card you least want to face on turn 2.
Necropede: Seems very solid, though you may not see any since he's one of the better infect cards in crossing over to non-infect decks.
Nim Deathmantle: Expensive, but pretty close to unbeatable. +2/+2, evasion, and recursion on a 2-cost equipment is really all you could ask for.
Trigon of Rage: A good card in any deck, it's an outright bomb in infect. Threatening +3/+0 on any creature they don't block is extremely powerful.
IV. Embrace My Diabolical Vision
Hopefully I've convinced someone to try out infect at their next draft. All signs point to Scars limited being all about drafting coherent decks and not just "good stuff", and I fully plan on forcing infect from here on out simply because it's the only deck that I know how to draft well. That said, I'd love to hear experiences in sealed and draft about the viability of infect and new directions the archetype can take.
T1 joraga treespeaker
T2 level up, chalice for one
T3 titan, find eye of ugin and temple
T4 swing, find two more temples, tutor up emrakul
T5 cast emrakul
And you only need to hit four land drops. Heck, you only need three if you naturally draw into a temple. If they kill your titan, then you can settle for finding ulamog or kozilek, or just casting them on turn 4 if you naturally draw into them. The weakest part of this is that if they have a bolt for your treespeaker, it can be difficult to come back, but even a single growth spasm allows for turn 4 titan with nothing else save land drops. And this is an entirely realistic god hand; the only assumptions we're making is you have all untapped lands (easy enough in mono-green), your first land is a forest, and you have a treespeaker on turn one, a chalice (or overgrown battlements, or any other 1-2 mana accelerant) on turn 2, and the titan on turn three. Burn and terminate are the only truly good answers to treespeaker, anyway; this is too fast for a wrath effect, condemn doesn't hit treespeaker, planeswalkers are too slow, path delays you only one turn, etc. etc.
Running mono-green eldrazi (or any kind of eldrazi ramp) has always been sub-par, in my opinion. So many people see stuff like eye of ugin and eldrazi temple and assume that the archetype is viable simply because it has some support cards. My GW summoning trap deck was changed into mono-green eldrazi two hours after this guy's spoiler came out. Having a deck with eight must-counter 6-drops is pretty ridiculous when you can dedicate 15+ slots to getting said six-drops out by turn four.
Also, here goes another set where I put off playing a real deck and instead play an objectively worse deck of my own design of which I am intensely proud. Now stop jacking up his price so I can afford four of them.
If a casual player wants to drop from a tournament halfway through so he can jump in a game of EDH with his friends, should he be penalized for not seeing the tournament through? I'd wager that we'd see a huge drop in tournament attendance if that were so.
I just broke 1800 in limited, and I can't recall a single tournament where I have dropped, and that's not because I think that it's at all "wrong" to drop or whatever; I just have a particular purpose in mind when I go to an event, and that purpose usually doesn't require dropping if I'm doing badly. I do care about my rating, but for the most part, I go to a tournament to have fun first, become a better player second, and get prizes and rating third. For people who have prizes and rating as their primary motivation (and getting prizes may be the most fun thing about Magic for them, which is a personal preference more than anything), then there's no reason to punish them by making them play Magic and not have fun or lose rating.
At my university, there are a couple dozen people who just play for fun and bring casual, EDH, what-have-you to the table and just play to have fun between classes.
It's not a problem with Magic, it's a problem with your playgroup. One of the things to understand about Magic is that not everyone plays the same game. If you're playing against someone who wants something out of the game that you don't share, then you're not going to have fun. Go find a casual group, and stop playing at FNM.
I like the idea of pilgrim's eye, and I'm not even sure that glassdust is necessary as a win condition. I'm debating between 3 spreading seas and 2 tezzeret or 4 glassdust and 1 tezzeret. You can already win with jace, and glassdust seems kind of vulnerable. Also, spreading seas is sick against jund, decent against vampires on the play, and neutralizes those manlands, which seem to be all the rage these days. Personally, I'm seeing virtually no RDW or boros in my meta, which puts the rest for the weary into the side and generally places time seive in a pretty strong position.
I also want to test a creatureless version (so the spreading seas plan) sideboarding into 4x lodestone golem, though I doubt it'll be good enough. Still, golem is great against a lot of decks out there, and getting one turn 3 off a chalice against an opponent who sided out their removal is pretty sick.
Also, I'm not liking halimar depths in the few games I've played. Its only synergy is with shuffle effects, and you generally will be using all your mana every turn. Considering we already run 8 CipT mana sources, it doesn't seem to provide enough benefit for the opportunity cost.
My list, just in case anyone's interested in seeing yet another build of the same deck.
2 Jace Beleren
1 Tezzeret the seeker
4 Glassdust hulk
3 time sieve
4 open the vaults
4 kaleidostone
4 howling mine
2 pilgrim's eye
4 everflowing chalice
4 Time Warp
4 angelsong
4 fieldmist borderpost
1 halimar depths
4 plains
1 swamp
7 island
3 marsh flats
4 negate
4 rest for the weary
4 spreading seas
3 day of judgement
If you're consistently good at drafting, then it can be a really good way to make money, and I highly recommend it over buying sealed product. If you aren't good at drafting, then draft anyway, since it's probably the best way to get better at Magic. I went from a guy with johnny decks that goes 2-2 every week to one of the best limited players in the store with enough of a collection (and enough good friends) to build just about any standard deck I want. I got 2 BSAs from drafting (in consecutive drafts, no less), my good friend pulled a third that he'll loan me whenever, and I know at least half a dozen people who would let me borrow the fourth for any given tournament. My only significant expense has come from drafting every week, which is paid for pretty dang fast if you just stay away from buying boxes and packs.
So, to summarize: make friends, draft more.
To be honest, I've been wanting to netdeck for a while, but never was interested enough in a deck to do so early enough to matter. So I'm basically going to hawk channelfireball until LSV posts a good decklist that is not Grixis, then run it for the foreseeable future.
Pulled two of the manlands, a persecutor, and a misty rainforest. Some other guy pulled a foil Jace.
I like the idea of running both standard and draft at the same time; twice the number of winners, really.