So I'm a pretty casual player. I started playing Magic in 1995, but got bored with it when the game became all about decks that did nothing but search for and set up the perfect combo to end the game within 4 rounds. Just wasn't fun to me. I like Magic for what it was when it first started - creating big-ass armies of big-ass creatures that do big-ass damage and wreak havok all over the game table. At least, that's how I see the original purpose of Magic!
So when Commander came out, it was basically perfect as far as I was concerned, and I started playing again. I'm not the most creative deck builder in the world though, so most of my decks are built around some general that can voltron up and do massive damage over the course of a few rounds.
The first deck I ever built for Commander was Rafiq - I owned the card from a Shards draft I and several friends had done several years ago, and quite frankly, I love Bant, so it seems like that was the way to go. I built a deck based around the exalted abilities, and it seemed to actually do pretty well in casual friends' games, but any time I went up against anyone at the local Magic store, I usually got clobbered pretty quickly, either because I drew too much hate right up front, or the deck wasn't quick enough to ever do any real damage. Don't get me wrong, when the deck worked, it worked, but when it didn't (which was more often than not), I lost.
Because I love Bant, I have recently also attempted a Jenara deck based very heavily on ISBPathfinder's Jenara deck, but at the end of the day, I'm just not good enough at the kinds of combos needed for that particular deck to work, and I didn't have the money for a lot of the necessary cards. I'm not cheap - I'll buy good cards, but I would have had to buy almost all the cards in that deck, and several are a bit out of my casual-minded budget.
So basically, I had to figure out how to build a deck based around the kinds of things I find to be fun in Magic. And that is about clobbering enemies to death with massive damage. Rafiq fit the bill for that. Of course, he's an aggro-drawever, so I had to find ways so that by the time I pulled him out, I could do enough damage to at least make an impression, and hopefully kill somebody (or everybody) in the process. So I started looking at infected.
The criteria I had for this deck was three-fold: 1 - to create a deck that I would have fun with; 2 - to create a deck that actually had a possibility of winning; and 3 - to create a deck that I didn't have to spend a ton of money on. Criteria 3 basically meant that I didn't want to buy any cards that I didn't already own, unless they were either cheap or literally necessary for the deck. The only necessary card I wanted for the deck that I didn't already own was Berserk, so I bought it. Other than that, I bought a few el-cheapos here and there, and built the deck out of what I already had. Obviously, there are several better dual-lands (or just better lands in general) I could fit in here, but again, not going the expensive route. Here you go.
The deck is not very combo-heavy. Some of the basic ideas are to get Rafiq out, throw on the Grafted Exoskeleton, hit him with Berserk + Distortion Strike, there goes one player. Obviously proliferate is a pretty important factor in the deck as well.
What do you guys think? Any particular strategies I should be looking at that I may be missing? Any of my "Cards I'm Still Thinking About" that I should not be thinking about, or that I should definitely be playing? Any other recommendations (that won't cost me a ton of money)?
I've never played Rafiq myself, but I play Bant, namely a rendition of ISBPathfinder's Jenara decklist that you referenced above. Your list looks pretty different, for obvious reasons, than any Rafiq list I've ever looked at before. That doesn't necessarily make it better or worse, just pretty different.
That said, I think there are a few things that should probably be included, even if your strategy is pretty different than the average Rafiq build. Even if you're not going to be heavy on counters, Spell Crumple and Hinder's tuck effects are just too good to pass up for really screwing people out of their generals or other critical cards. Similarly, I think you will want some wrath effects. Austere Command is a great choice, and Hallowed Burial and Oblivion Stone can be very good too.
I personally might be inclined to ditch some of the weaker creatures in exchange for War Gate and/or Green Sun's Zenith in order to give your deck greater consistency and ability to get what you want/need when you want/need it. Survival of the Fittest is obviously a great card for this purpose, but it's probably above your aforementioned price considerations.
Definitely like Hallowed Burial! Is there a card that does the same effect for cards in graveyards? I don't know a lot of card names well enough to know for certain on my own.
Definitely like Hallowed Burial! Is there a card that does the same effect for cards in graveyards? I don't know a lot of card names well enough to know for certain on my own.
So I've made some pretty major changes to the deck. A major issue was it was playing too slowly.
I exchanged a lot of the higher CC creatures with some 1CC & 2CC creatures at first, however they were just not getting the job done.
A friend of mine had a Noble Hierarch that he loaned me (which doesn't fit my budget mindedness), which got me thinking about adding Exalted back in as a secondary (or at least, less primary-than Infect) win condition. Of course, at the end of the day, the win condition of this deck is getting Rafiq out and beating someone to death with him.
If you don't mind paying for her Sublime Archangel would love a spot here. Also, protecting Rafiq is a big deal if he's how you win. Dudes like Dauntless Escort and Saffi Eriksdotter are a great (and cheap!) way to protect him.
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Amazing Avy & Sig by mchief111 @ Rising Studios [4/22/11]
Ah yes, those are some awesome cards! I definitely will not be able to purchase Sublime (but man, she looks sweet), but Dauntless and Saffi are both very much within the budget. Thanks for the suggestions!
Lemme say here that you absolutely need to get a Sublime Archangel for this deck if at all possible. It's by far the best four-drop next to rafiq you can have with an infect rafiq deck.
Find the pennies in the bank and get it.
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Tantarus: It didn't make the gaka greifer level, so it should be fine
It seems to me that for a deck like this, you don't need Proliferate at all. Since all you need to do is get your infect creature up to 4 power in order for Rafiq to bring it up to 10, which, if you can get a clean shot at a player, will take him out of the game. So the most important thing is to protect Rafiq and your infector, get your infector up to 4, attack someone with it, and protect yourself from everyone else, who will attack you with everything they have in order not to die the next turn. So there are several different ways to go about this:
1. Wait for people to use up some resources, wipe the board, and ping everybody for the win.
2. Set up a strong defense and gain lots of life, while setting up a virtually impenetrable attacker, then attack and fend off the harsh repercussions. Play politically and don't reveal your winning card until you have all the other peaces; make them as inconspicuous as possible.
3. Set up really quickly and attack before other people have a defense.
My personal favorite is the second one. Stuff like Celestial Mantle are definitely really good. Overall I wouldn't suggest attacking someone until you can kill them one-shot.
So I'm a pretty casual player. I started playing Magic in 1995, but got bored with it when the game became all about decks that did nothing but search for and set up the perfect combo to end the game within 4 rounds. Just wasn't fun to me. I like Magic for what it was when it first started - creating big-ass armies of big-ass creatures that do big-ass damage and wreak havok all over the game table. At least, that's how I see the original purpose of Magic!
So when Commander came out, it was basically perfect as far as I was concerned, and I started playing again. I'm not the most creative deck builder in the world though, so most of my decks are built around some general that can voltron up and do massive damage over the course of a few rounds.
The first deck I ever built for Commander was Rafiq - I owned the card from a Shards draft I and several friends had done several years ago, and quite frankly, I love Bant, so it seems like that was the way to go. I built a deck based around the exalted abilities, and it seemed to actually do pretty well in casual friends' games, but any time I went up against anyone at the local Magic store, I usually got clobbered pretty quickly, either because I drew too much hate right up front, or the deck wasn't quick enough to ever do any real damage. Don't get me wrong, when the deck worked, it worked, but when it didn't (which was more often than not), I lost.
Because I love Bant, I have recently also attempted a Jenara deck based very heavily on ISBPathfinder's Jenara deck, but at the end of the day, I'm just not good enough at the kinds of combos needed for that particular deck to work, and I didn't have the money for a lot of the necessary cards. I'm not cheap - I'll buy good cards, but I would have had to buy almost all the cards in that deck, and several are a bit out of my casual-minded budget.
So basically, I had to figure out how to build a deck based around the kinds of things I find to be fun in Magic. And that is about clobbering enemies to death with massive damage. Rafiq fit the bill for that. Of course, he's an aggro-drawever, so I had to find ways so that by the time I pulled him out, I could do enough damage to at least make an impression, and hopefully kill somebody (or everybody) in the process. So I started looking at infected.
The criteria I had for this deck was three-fold: 1 - to create a deck that I would have fun with; 2 - to create a deck that actually had a possibility of winning; and 3 - to create a deck that I didn't have to spend a ton of money on. Criteria 3 basically meant that I didn't want to buy any cards that I didn't already own, unless they were either cheap or literally necessary for the deck. The only necessary card I wanted for the deck that I didn't already own was Berserk, so I bought it. Other than that, I bought a few el-cheapos here and there, and built the deck out of what I already had. Obviously, there are several better dual-lands (or just better lands in general) I could fit in here, but again, not going the expensive route. Here you go.
1x Rafiq of the Many (Foil)
CREATURES (39, including Artifact Creatures)
1x Elvish Herder
1x Glistener Elf
1x Mother of Runes
1x Taunting Elf
1x Virulent Sliver
1x Advance Scout
1x Blight Mamba
1x Blighted Agent
1x Ichorclaw Myr
1x Jhessian Infiltrator
1x Lost Leonin
1x Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1x Necropede
1x Plague Myr
1x Rootwater Thief
1x Shinen of Life's Roar
1x Thrummingbird
1x Caustic Wasps
1x Cold-Eyed Selkie
1x Cystbearer
1x Dawning Purist
1x Jhessian Balmgiver
1x Phyrexian Digester
1x Priests of Norn
1x Rot Wolf
1x Sabertooth Cobra
1x Spawnwrithe
1x Trygon Predator
1x Viridian Corrupter
1x Blightwidow
1x Core Prowler
1x Corpse Cur
1x Tangle Angler
1x Timbermare
1x Tine Shrike
1x Viral Drake
1x Murkfiend Liege
1x Phyrexian Hydra
1x Phyrexian Swarmlord
1x Livewire Lash
1x Whispersilk Cloak
1x Grafted Exoskeleton
1x Trigon of Infestation
ENCHANTMENTS (3)
1x Archery Training
1x Hermetic Study
1x Psionic Gift
INSTANTS (14)
1x Barkshell Blessing
1x Berserk
1x Crop Rotation
1x Gather Courage
1x Giant Growth
1x Mutagenic Growth
1x Righteousness
1x Vines of Vastwood
1x Wax Wane
1x Apostle's Blessing
1x Deluge
1x Harrow
1x Carrion Call
1x Ensnare
SORCERIES (2)
1x Distortion Strike
1x Triumph of the Hordes
LANDS (36)
16x Forest
2x Island
1x Plains
1x Breeding Pool
1x Calciform Pools
1x Command Tower
1x Flagstones of Trokair
1x Flooded Strand
1x Gavony Township
1x Glacial Fortress
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Nimbus Maze
1x Novijen, Heart of Progress
1x Saltcrusted Steppe
1x Strip Mine
1x Sunpetal Grove
1x Temple Garden
1x Wasteland
1x Windswept Heath
1x Venser, the Sojourner
1x Mirari's Wake
1x Heartbeat of Spring
1x Wrath of God
1x Pattern of Rebirth
1x Wargate
1x Finest Hour
1x Bant-ish Signets (Azorius, Selesnya, Simic)
1x Hinder
1x Spell Crumple
The deck is not very combo-heavy. Some of the basic ideas are to get Rafiq out, throw on the Grafted Exoskeleton, hit him with Berserk + Distortion Strike, there goes one player. Obviously proliferate is a pretty important factor in the deck as well.
What do you guys think? Any particular strategies I should be looking at that I may be missing? Any of my "Cards I'm Still Thinking About" that I should not be thinking about, or that I should definitely be playing? Any other recommendations (that won't cost me a ton of money)?
I've never played Rafiq myself, but I play Bant, namely a rendition of ISBPathfinder's Jenara decklist that you referenced above. Your list looks pretty different, for obvious reasons, than any Rafiq list I've ever looked at before. That doesn't necessarily make it better or worse, just pretty different.
That said, I think there are a few things that should probably be included, even if your strategy is pretty different than the average Rafiq build. Even if you're not going to be heavy on counters, Spell Crumple and Hinder's tuck effects are just too good to pass up for really screwing people out of their generals or other critical cards. Similarly, I think you will want some wrath effects. Austere Command is a great choice, and Hallowed Burial and Oblivion Stone can be very good too.
I personally might be inclined to ditch some of the weaker creatures in exchange for War Gate and/or Green Sun's Zenith in order to give your deck greater consistency and ability to get what you want/need when you want/need it. Survival of the Fittest is obviously a great card for this purpose, but it's probably above your aforementioned price considerations.
Good luck!
R.I.P. Sundering Titan (6/20/12) and Braids, Cabal Minion (9/12/14)
Thanks for responding!
Definitely like Hallowed Burial! Is there a card that does the same effect for cards in graveyards? I don't know a lot of card names well enough to know for certain on my own.
Loaming Shaman, Primal Command, Praetor's Counsel for example.
If you go the infect route, Putrefax is great.
Also Finest Hour is pretty much staple card in most (all?) of the Rafiq decks.
I have no idea how I didn't put Putrefax in this deck - I even already had it in my old Rafiq deck. Talk about a brain fart!
I have a Praetor's Counsel, but not the other two, I'll check them out, thanks!
Any other suggestions?
I exchanged a lot of the higher CC creatures with some 1CC & 2CC creatures at first, however they were just not getting the job done.
A friend of mine had a Noble Hierarch that he loaned me (which doesn't fit my budget mindedness), which got me thinking about adding Exalted back in as a secondary (or at least, less primary-than Infect) win condition. Of course, at the end of the day, the win condition of this deck is getting Rafiq out and beating someone to death with him.
1x Rafiq of the Many (Foil)
CREATURES (36, including Artifact Creatures)
1x Advance Scout
1x Akrasan Squire
1x Aven Squire
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Blight Mamba
1x Blighted Agent
1x Blightwidow
1x Bond Beetle
1x Core Prowler
1x Corpse Cur
1x Cystbearer
1x Elvish Herder
1x Giltspire Avenger
1x Glistener Elf
1x Ichorclaw Myr
1x Jhessian Balmgiver
1x Lost Leonin
1x Mother of Runes
1x Murkfiend Liege
1x Necropede
1x Nimble Mongoose
1x Noble Hierarch
1x Phyrexian Digester
1x Plague Myr
1x Priests of Norn
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Rot Wolf
1x Sabertooth Cobra
1x Scute Mob
1x Shinen of Life's Roar
1x Tangle Angler
1x Taunting Elf
1x Tine Shrike
1x Viral Drake
1x Viridian Corrupter
1x Virulent Sliver
1x Grafted Exoskeleton
1x Livewire Lash
1x Shield of the Righteous
1x Sol Ring
1x Surestrike Trident
1x Swiftfoot Boots
1x Viridian Longbow
1x Whispersilk Cloak
ENCHANTMENTS (5)
1x Archery Training
1x Corrupted Conscience
1x Hermetic Study
1x Psionic Gift
1x Retaliation
INSTANTS (12)
1x Apostle's Blessing
1x Barkshell Blessing
1x Carrion Call
1x Crop Rotation
1x Dawn Charm
1x Evolution Charm
1x Giant Growth
1x Harrow
1x Mutagenic Growth
1x Riding Red Hare
1x Vines of Vastwood
1x Wax Wane
SORCERIES (1)
1x Distortion Strike
1x Command Tower
1x Cathedral of War
1x Elfhame Palace
14x Forest
1x Glacial Fortress
1x Inkmoth Nexus
5x Island
1x Pendlehaven
3x Plains
1x Rupture Spire
1x Saltcrusted Steppe
1x Seaside Citadel
1x Secluded Steppe
1x Selesnya Sanctuary
1x Sungrass Prairie
1x Sunpetal Grove
1x Tranquil Thicket
Find the pennies in the bank and get it.
EDH:
RNorin the WaryR <-Link! (Primer - Mono Red Control)
GUEdric, Spymaster of TrestUG <- Link! (Mini-Primer - Dredge)
Duel Commander:
WUGeist of Saint TraftUW <- Link! (Aggro-Control)
BGSkullbriar, the Walking GraveGB <- Link! (Aggro)
BUGDamia, Sage of StoneGUB <- Link! (Extinction Control)
Church of the Wary
1. Wait for people to use up some resources, wipe the board, and ping everybody for the win.
2. Set up a strong defense and gain lots of life, while setting up a virtually impenetrable attacker, then attack and fend off the harsh repercussions. Play politically and don't reveal your winning card until you have all the other peaces; make them as inconspicuous as possible.
3. Set up really quickly and attack before other people have a defense.
My personal favorite is the second one. Stuff like Celestial Mantle are definitely really good. Overall I wouldn't suggest attacking someone until you can kill them one-shot.