I know this topic has been beaten, burned, bashed, slammed, and tossed to death, but I haven't really seen the scenarios I've bumped into for infect in EDH. With a bit of digging, i've noticed that a majority of the community is okay with poison counters being a 10 limit to kill a player in EDH. EDH is for the long game with 5+ palyers in mind, and the more players you add the harder the infect decks have to work to win. Playing with and against infect decks, i understand the struggle on both sides.
Then there's the other part of the community that feels 10 poison counters is too low and that it rushes the game. After playing some gross combos with infect my friends are now in this group. They want the poison counter limit to be 20 to kill a player. I feel 20 is unfair. Even 15, another number i see thrown around a bit, is too high. Personally, i feel 10 is right were it needs to be. But, i want to share 2 combo's i've used that got me in this awkward situation with my group, and would like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Scenario 1 - I ran a Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck. got him out on turn 4 with the aid of ramp. On turn 5 I played a land, enchanted Nekusar with Phyresis and then played Windfall. by turn 7 Each player died with little extra draw cards i got. It happened so fast for my friends that they felt i cheated in a way. Is it fair? they had 2 turns to kill it and a fair bit of cards to go through. in a 5 player game of EDH, not a one had answers. I felt proud of my victory, but everyone else raged at me :c.
Scenario 2 - After the previous incident one of my friends built Jhoira of the Ghitu and included Blightsteel Colossus to spite me. And he got good old blight steel out really fast with an early ramped in jhoira + Fury Charm and his sites were on me. He got him into play and swung, i had no blockers at the time. "Well, any responses?" he said with a big grin. The table got really quiet and my other friends, upset because they knew they were next, were super excited about me getting a taste of my own medicine. "Yes." i said. and played Delirium on his blightsteel. He was playing blue and had not responses to my spell. My one spell made his own creature instantly kill him due to the "10" poison counter rule. So... now if we are to play infect in our group its 20 poison counters or no infect :/ . I find it unfair, since i out smarted them twice. So, what do you all think? Do you all agree with me and should keep it 10? Bump it up? I feel we should lower it (Troll Face)
1) Any half measures do not count which is the big reason to say no its not. Your damage wont really add up with other player's damage and that means that you cant really work well with another player to take someone out.
2) Spot removal is a thing. Lots of what makes Infect sort of work is burst turns and big one time pumps. There are very selective things that work to make infect decent. The more responses and or mazes you see the worse infect is.
If you want to look at what infect cards are decent / good you are really talking something like 5 cards possibly mostly over green and black. Overall, I think its ok but in the end I think that its not something worth investing in heavily because there are not a lot of actually good effects in the card pool for the mechanic. Overall, I would say the mechanic is not very good. It is very very rare that I see infect and even more rare that I see it work.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I think the way you or your group specifically plays infect should not matter for this decision. Either it is too powerfull or it is not, power level of plays can be easily adjusted.
Personally I think 10 life is okay. Infect aggro is still hard to pull of because it is far less consistent in the 100 card singleton format then in normal formats where you can play 4 ofs. So the only way to run infect effectively, barring Skittles as commander, is with Phyresis or that equipment that grans infect (forgot it's name) on something else. Which in turn I feel are enough steps to take to justify it being 10. In your example above, all your opponents have had 2 turns to try and get rid of that aura. The fact they did not while the threat is obvious means they either do not have enough removal, have bad threat assesment, or all of them simply did not draw their removal in these turns. In case of the latter well, ***** happens, and the former two means the problem at hand is not the infect number.
TLDR; infect at 10 is just fine.
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I feel some people just don't expect it, so sometimes t can be an easy win due to it not being common. I feel if you have permanent sources of making your creatures bigger, doubling damage and protecting them, then its really good. I had a Kresh, the bloodbraided jund deck that was infect. It didn't run a huge creatures but it had a lot of ways to pump creatures and double damage
on the other hand, people hate it because many people find it cheesy since you only need to hit 10. When I played infect edh, we had 20 infect rule and it was still pretty easy
Your damage wont really add up with other player's damage and that means that you cant really work well with another player to take someone out.
! That fact didn't even occur to me. Looking at infect that way, makes it seem like the loner, unless more than one person is play infect at the same time which seems rare.
Another point against it in EDH: Unless there are multiple people playing infect, "player removal" is often the only effective answer to not dying to poison. e.g. you're at 8 poison, and all the infect player has to do is draw his contagion engine to knock you out of the game barring counterspell action. So you're literally one card away from losing the game completely regardless of your board presence or impact on the rest of the game. Or, you could kill the infect player and suddenly that 8 poison means nothing. You could even be the top remaining player.
So, I'd imagine lots of people focus on the infect player to keep him at an easily killable state because doing so basically erases each other players' risk of dying to poison.
Another point against it in EDH: Unless there are multiple people playing infect, "player removal" is often the only effective answer to not dying to poison. e.g. you're at 8 poison, and all the infect player has to do is draw his contagion engine to knock you out of the game barring counterspell action. So you're literally one card away from losing the game completely regardless of your board presence or impact on the rest of the game. Or, you could kill the infect player and suddenly that 8 poison means nothing. You could even be the top remaining player.
So, I'd imagine lots of people focus on the infect player to keep him at an easily killable state because doing so basically erases each other players' risk of dying to poison.
You could make the same argument about someone playing combo, where all it takes is one combo piece and then the game is over. Even so, people still play combo, they just remove the pieces, counter them, kill the player. The same solution works here too, except the majority of cards that give the initial poison counters that are needed to proliferate have to do so via doing damage (other than only a couple of cards like Ichor Rats, Decimator Web, and Reaper of Sheoldred).
I am racking my brain to figure out what advantages are offered by an Infect strategy, but I can’t think of anything that really sticks. And, I have played a fair bit of Infect, from Skittles, to traditional aggro Infect with Doran, to one shot Infect with Rafiq, Mimeoplasm, or Xenagos. In all cases, I decided that other decks were better.
If it is traditional aggro, the problem is with traditional aggro. You lose to wipes. If two or more wipes happen between Turn 5 and Turn 10, you will definitely lose, and being outside of that Turn 10 window means that you’ll lose even in these “Spirit of EDH” groups who hold mostly to that baseline. It’s strategically identical to running something like Jor Kadeen, Gahiji Honored One, or similar, and so likewise, it’s generally inferior to either General damage strategies, Spellslinger strategies, and just ordinary GoodStuff strategies that win with tired cards like Craterhoof Behemoth.
If on the other hand it is some one-shot pump sequence with Grafted Exoskeleton , Glistening Oil, Phyresis, Triumph of the Hordes or something involving an incidental Inkmoth Nexus or Plague Myr and pumps you’d be running anyway, then keep in mind that there are a lot of cards that just make for explosive sequences. It could be Malignus with Double Strike, some Breath of Fury play, or just a Commander pumped up for General damage. Case in point, Blightsteel Colossus might as well be Phage the Untouchable, no difference whatsoever. It is a one shot kill, of which there are plenty.
Really just substitution any combo here, not even necessarily having to do with creatures or permanents, and it’s the same thing. In fact, with Maze of Ith being in the format, it is really clunky to ever try to arm up one creature for a single shot combat kill. It’s probably better than trying to swarm out 3 other players with 2-3 drops, but immensely vulnerable to Maze, or any other removal of basically any sort that a normal opponent could expect to be running. Lots and lots of combo sequences don’t present as many vulnerabilities to interaction.
So, if your group has an issue with Infect, then that’s sad, but you always have stronger strategies that are available to you.
In my mind, if you hadn’t had Delirium in that spot with Blightsteel, your group would be of the exact opposite opinion about Infect, without anything of the rules of Infect in the format having changed. Evidently, they just don’t like people winning. Nothing you can do about that, because after all, winning is the objective of the game.
You might notice of those 9 cards, only 3 are actually creatures that have infect naturally (4, if you count the manland). The rest are granting infect to an arbitrary other creature.
The most effective infect decks I've seen have Skithyrix as the commander, run Blightsteel in the 99, and they might have Tainted Strike and/or Grafted Exoskeleton as well. Mostly, one-shot with Blightsteel or a Hatred-powered Skithyrix are the way to go.
Also, any +1/+1 counter-themed deck with blue should at least consider Viral Drake as a matter of principle.
Finally, there's attacking with something with 9 power and making it ten if you're not blocked.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I believe that perception is unfortunately more important than fact when it comes to what`s kosher and not in EDH. So I think the more important question isn`t whether it`s an easy win - I don`t think it is - but whether it is regarded as an easy win, and in my experience it is.
I played a single Putrefax as my only infect creature in The Mimeoplasm and managed to one-shot a guy with it out of nowhere with Entomb. It felt way too dirty for my taste, and my group weren`t happy about it and started targeting me heavily after that, so I took it out. Fact of the matter is that it might almost as well be something without infect, such as maybe a Groundbreaker with Death`s Shadow counters on it, swinging for lethal at that point in the game, but it just feels so much cheaper with infect.
Generally speaking I don`t like playing with or against EDH decks that win out of nowhere. When we are four people gathered around a table for fun on a night off, and we are done shuffling our hundred card decks, I want the game to last, and I don`t want anyone to lose early. That`s just me though, YMMV in your group.
I don't see swinging for the win with Triumph of the Hordes as any different than doing it with Kikki-Jikki. In the commander slot Skittles kills someone with 10 damage instead of 21, but he's way worse at attacking then top Voltrons like Uril and has fewer, mostly inferior, Voltron parts available to him. Infect can be powerful, but it also has its drawbacks like being bad against pay life to win strategies and very limited card selection.
I think the real problem is perpetual board stall, which is almost inherent for low power tables. If one guy stumbles and gets chipped or poisoned out of the game it might take more than an hour for one of the remaining decks to snowball enough for the fair beatdown victory.
I thing, I have less of an issue with dedicated infect decks.
My problem are the one-shot kill cards that you can through in to your deck to take out this one unlucky guy.
Yes, it may be just one at a time, but hey, that's even worst. Now he can watch the other 3 playing for the next hour! Phyrexian Hydra in Xenagos is an example. An easy turn 5 kill for an unprepared opponent (haste is an important thing here).
If somebody pays 12 mana for Blightsteel Colossus and attacks the next turn. Sure, I could deal with it, I'm dead. But that is not the problem.
It's the fast and easy - Counterspell or die - Tainted Strike and such.
Sure, other strategies are faster / better, but this is about the low power battlecruiser games, that usually take 10+ turns.
Why is the starting life at 40? Why is Commander damage 21?
Let's change poison to 15, so adjust it a little bit more to EDH.
What do you have to lose? Seriously! What the h*** do you have to lose?
Well, what do you have to lose from relegating Infect into the category of things that are appropriate for these "battlecruiser" games, and into this category you have for "faster/better" strategies? What is the difference? Why do you never, ever see Doomsday combos that are "counterspell or die", but you keep seeing Blightsteel?
I don't get it. On a table where everyone is pulling punches, why are some punches pulled but not others. Answer me this question and I will gladly use it to avoid getting a bunch of angry PM's and so on when someone decides that what I did wasn't fair.
Sure, we can house-ban the Hydra for this deck, and Putrefax for Mimeo and Blightsteel Colossus for Animar or whatever - because the cards are all "fair" in other decks - but is this what you would advice us to do?
The best part of Commander deckbuilding is to use cards that in combination with your commander turn the synergy level over 9000.
As for the advice: adapt to your meta: run more instant speed removal / disruption. Creature destruction, bounce, fog effects. Whatever fits your deck. If you have trouble interacting with your opponent when you need to it's your deck that is the problem because you need to be able to do so against non-infect decks as well. Which cards are best for this depends on your commander.
I run Xenagod as one of my decks myself and have to run more enchantment hate than I want to because Grave Pact effects are popular in my meta and Grave Pact + instant speed sacrifice outright wrecks Xenagod. Of course i'd rather not, but it's the cost of doing business with Xenagod.
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Sure, we can house-ban the Hydra for this deck, and Putrefax for Mimeo and Blightsteel Colossus for Animar or whatever - because the cards are all "fair" in other decks - but is this what you would advice us to do?
The best part of Commander deckbuilding is to use cards that in combination with your commander turn the synergy level over 9000.
As for the advice: adapt to your meta: run more instant speed removal / disruption. Creature destruction, bounce, fog effects. Whatever fits your deck. If you have trouble interacting with your opponent when you need to it's your deck that is the problem because you need to be able to do so against non-infect decks as well. Which cards are best for this depends on your commander.
I run Xenagod as one of my decks myself and have to run more enchantment hate than I want to because Grave Pact effects are popular in my meta and Grave Pact + instant speed sacrifice outright wrecks Xenagod. Of course i'd rather not, but it's the cost of doing business with Xenagod.
Okay, so I didn't say the Xenagos deck was good, or anithing. It's not even the problem that the Hydra would kill me or anything.
Picture this scenario:
Player 1 has Grave Pact, a creature and a sac outlet.
Player 2 has Swords to Plowshares
Player 3 is tapped out and has no blocker in turn 5 (or whatever turn)
Player 4 has Xenagos and plays Phyrexian Hydra.
Player 2 shows SoP, so The Hydra kills Player 3. (Sure Player 1 or 2 could have saved him, but why should they?)
Is this a good experiece for Player 3? Maybe he should not tap out or have more defense / blockers. Maybe he did nothing wrong.
I don't think the catch-all argument "run more removal" is helping anything.
What about " He didn't have the right answer at the right time so he genuinely lost fair and square?" Like you do against combo if you don't have a counterspell, or a green mass pump spell if you don't have a fog etc?
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The secret to enjoyable Commander games is not winning first, but losing last.
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10 is fine. Especially when someone is willing to take a hit so the other opponent can draw some cards. And then you toss a tainted strike on the guy and pump him to 10.
Sure, we can house-ban the Hydra for this deck, and Putrefax for Mimeo and Blightsteel Colossus for Animar or whatever - because the cards are all "fair" in other decks - but is this what you would advice us to do?
The best part of Commander deckbuilding is to use cards that in combination with your commander turn the synergy level over 9000.
As for the advice: adapt to your meta: run more instant speed removal / disruption. Creature destruction, bounce, fog effects. Whatever fits your deck. If you have trouble interacting with your opponent when you need to it's your deck that is the problem because you need to be able to do so against non-infect decks as well. Which cards are best for this depends on your commander.
I run Xenagod as one of my decks myself and have to run more enchantment hate than I want to because Grave Pact effects are popular in my meta and Grave Pact + instant speed sacrifice outright wrecks Xenagod. Of course i'd rather not, but it's the cost of doing business with Xenagod.
Okay, so I didn't say the Xenagos deck was good, or anithing. It's not even the problem that the Hydra would kill me or anything.
Picture this scenario:
Player 1 has Grave Pact, a creature and a sac outlet.
Player 2 has Swords to Plowshares
Player 3 is tapped out and has no blocker in turn 5 (or whatever turn)
Player 4 has Xenagos and plays Phyrexian Hydra.
Player 2 shows SoP, so The Hydra kills Player 3. (Sure Player 1 or 2 could have saved him, but why should they?)
Is this a good experiece for Player 3? Maybe he should not tap out or have more defense / blockers. Maybe he did nothing wrong.
I don't think the catch-all argument "run more removal" is helping anything.
What about " He didn't have the right answer at the right time so he genuinely lost fair and square?" Like you do against combo if you don't have a counterspell, or a green mass pump spell if you don't have a fog etc?
As I said before, this is "about the low power battlecruiser games, that usually take 10+ turns."
If I play against a turn 4 combo deck, I can lose, maybe grab a better deck and play again.
If we play lower power decks (like the "spirit of EDH") there can still be this: "ups, you die" as early as turn 4 or 5. And the game may be going on for another hour or two after that.
This has nothing to do with the ban list, my meta or anything. It's part of the rule set for multiplayer EDH: 40 life per player!
X poison counters!
If X stays 10, I think the rules are worse than they would be at 15. So easy.
Multiple people have already said 10 is fine. If 10 does not work for you then that is fine too. If you all decide to play underpowered decks because that's what you like and all of you feel infect is too strong / fast for the way you want to play then feel free to change this rule. But it is the way your group decides to approach the game that makes it problematic for you in the first place so your meta has everything to do with it. As multiple people have already stated, 10 is not a problem if you play by the 'official' rules.
As for someone dieing early on, I know it sucks but it just happens sometimes. I understand why you would want to try and keep everybody playing but this is first and foremost the deck pilot's responsibility. If you have no defense you will get picked on. What if the black player drops a turn 3 Necropotence and proceeds to draw 35 cards. Is not attacked until everyone is in the single digit life totals? To keep him in the game?
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The secret to enjoyable Commander games is not winning first, but losing last.
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If you think the poison limit in EDH should be 15 or 20 or 12.7624398645 or whatever else because life totals start at 40, shouldn't we errata some other cards, too? Creatures are a lot bigger in EDH versus 60-card formats so shouldn't we change the numbers on Mayael's Aria to 10, 20 and 40? It's also much more common to see bazillions of token creatures so we should make it so that Epic Struggle takes 40 creatures to win the game instead of only 20. And those graveyard decks! We definitely have to errata Mortal Combat so that you need 40 creatures in the yard. For that matter, Felidar Sovereign, Test of Endurance and Serra Ascendant all need their numbers adjusted, too.
Also, someone who stumbles a little out of the gates can -and often will- get picked off by any number of things. Infect is in no way unique there.
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You would never guess, at the terrifying sight of the man, that Hunding was as charming a companion as one could wish for.
Infect with 10 becomes incredible annoying in EDH if someone is actually trying to use it.
Thats in general not fun, so its fine to increase the required infect to whatever amount.
20 is so high, that winning with the infect creatures is usually not working out, unless you power it with some form of "combo" (in which case, you probably will win anyway, as its just another combo in the sea of other combos).
Really nobody wants games that end with a player hitting with an infect 1/1 and just +4/+4 and berserk that creature turn 2/3.
In the end you want interesting games, and the usual Infect deck doesnt provide that (same reason life is put to 40, simply to avoid people getting crushed by aggro decks).
Really nobody wants games that end with a player hitting with an infect 1/1 and just +4/+4 and berserk that creature turn 2/3.
i would, so long as I am winning due to it. i did win with Blighted Agent, Swords of X and Y in play (I think it was body and mind and feast and famine.) and Rafiq out to grant the double strike (The exalted did not matter) sure it was turn 5 but still, quick game.
Really nobody wants games that end with a player hitting with an infect 1/1 and just +4/+4 and berserk that creature turn 2/3.
i would, so long as I am winning due to it. i did win with Blighted Agent, Swords of X and Y in play (I think it was body and mind and feast and famine.) and Rafiq out to grant the double strike (The exalted did not matter) sure it was turn 5 but still, quick game.
And how much did your opponents enjoy that game?
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Really nobody wants games that end with a player hitting with an infect 1/1 and just +4/+4 and berserk that creature turn 2/3.
i would, so long as I am winning due to it. i did win with Blighted Agent, Swords of X and Y in play (I think it was body and mind and feast and famine.) and Rafiq out to grant the double strike (The exalted did not matter) sure it was turn 5 but still, quick game.
But "in general" people dislike these kind of decks that just attack and pump a creature to win.
I dislike the "obvisious" combos in EDH aswell, the same ***** that just wins, i like games in which cards and combos win i never seen before ; but that happens more and more rarely, if you know more cards and combos.
But the best kind of game is a surprising game, moments when you go "ok what does THIS card actually do".
Then there's the other part of the community that feels 10 poison counters is too low and that it rushes the game. After playing some gross combos with infect my friends are now in this group. They want the poison counter limit to be 20 to kill a player. I feel 20 is unfair. Even 15, another number i see thrown around a bit, is too high. Personally, i feel 10 is right were it needs to be. But, i want to share 2 combo's i've used that got me in this awkward situation with my group, and would like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Scenario 1 - I ran a Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck. got him out on turn 4 with the aid of ramp. On turn 5 I played a land, enchanted Nekusar with Phyresis and then played Windfall. by turn 7 Each player died with little extra draw cards i got. It happened so fast for my friends that they felt i cheated in a way. Is it fair? they had 2 turns to kill it and a fair bit of cards to go through. in a 5 player game of EDH, not a one had answers. I felt proud of my victory, but everyone else raged at me :c.
Scenario 2 - After the previous incident one of my friends built Jhoira of the Ghitu and included Blightsteel Colossus to spite me. And he got good old blight steel out really fast with an early ramped in jhoira + Fury Charm and his sites were on me. He got him into play and swung, i had no blockers at the time. "Well, any responses?" he said with a big grin. The table got really quiet and my other friends, upset because they knew they were next, were super excited about me getting a taste of my own medicine. "Yes." i said. and played Delirium on his blightsteel. He was playing blue and had not responses to my spell. My one spell made his own creature instantly kill him due to the "10" poison counter rule. So... now if we are to play infect in our group its 20 poison counters or no infect :/ . I find it unfair, since i out smarted them twice. So, what do you all think? Do you all agree with me and should keep it 10? Bump it up? I feel we should lower it (Troll Face)
1) Any half measures do not count which is the big reason to say no its not. Your damage wont really add up with other player's damage and that means that you cant really work well with another player to take someone out.
2) Spot removal is a thing. Lots of what makes Infect sort of work is burst turns and big one time pumps. There are very selective things that work to make infect decent. The more responses and or mazes you see the worse infect is.
If you want to look at what infect cards are decent / good you are really talking something like 5 cards possibly mostly over green and black. Overall, I think its ok but in the end I think that its not something worth investing in heavily because there are not a lot of actually good effects in the card pool for the mechanic. Overall, I would say the mechanic is not very good. It is very very rare that I see infect and even more rare that I see it work.
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Personally I think 10 life is okay. Infect aggro is still hard to pull of because it is far less consistent in the 100 card singleton format then in normal formats where you can play 4 ofs. So the only way to run infect effectively, barring Skittles as commander, is with Phyresis or that equipment that grans infect (forgot it's name) on something else. Which in turn I feel are enough steps to take to justify it being 10. In your example above, all your opponents have had 2 turns to try and get rid of that aura. The fact they did not while the threat is obvious means they either do not have enough removal, have bad threat assesment, or all of them simply did not draw their removal in these turns. In case of the latter well, ***** happens, and the former two means the problem at hand is not the infect number.
TLDR; infect at 10 is just fine.
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on the other hand, people hate it because many people find it cheesy since you only need to hit 10. When I played infect edh, we had 20 infect rule and it was still pretty easy
! That fact didn't even occur to me. Looking at infect that way, makes it seem like the loner, unless more than one person is play infect at the same time which seems rare.
So, I'd imagine lots of people focus on the infect player to keep him at an easily killable state because doing so basically erases each other players' risk of dying to poison.
You could make the same argument about someone playing combo, where all it takes is one combo piece and then the game is over. Even so, people still play combo, they just remove the pieces, counter them, kill the player. The same solution works here too, except the majority of cards that give the initial poison counters that are needed to proliferate have to do so via doing damage (other than only a couple of cards like Ichor Rats, Decimator Web, and Reaper of Sheoldred).
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If it is traditional aggro, the problem is with traditional aggro. You lose to wipes. If two or more wipes happen between Turn 5 and Turn 10, you will definitely lose, and being outside of that Turn 10 window means that you’ll lose even in these “Spirit of EDH” groups who hold mostly to that baseline. It’s strategically identical to running something like Jor Kadeen, Gahiji Honored One, or similar, and so likewise, it’s generally inferior to either General damage strategies, Spellslinger strategies, and just ordinary GoodStuff strategies that win with tired cards like Craterhoof Behemoth.
If on the other hand it is some one-shot pump sequence with Grafted Exoskeleton , Glistening Oil, Phyresis, Triumph of the Hordes or something involving an incidental Inkmoth Nexus or Plague Myr and pumps you’d be running anyway, then keep in mind that there are a lot of cards that just make for explosive sequences. It could be Malignus with Double Strike, some Breath of Fury play, or just a Commander pumped up for General damage. Case in point, Blightsteel Colossus might as well be Phage the Untouchable, no difference whatsoever. It is a one shot kill, of which there are plenty.
Really just substitution any combo here, not even necessarily having to do with creatures or permanents, and it’s the same thing. In fact, with Maze of Ith being in the format, it is really clunky to ever try to arm up one creature for a single shot combat kill. It’s probably better than trying to swarm out 3 other players with 2-3 drops, but immensely vulnerable to Maze, or any other removal of basically any sort that a normal opponent could expect to be running. Lots and lots of combo sequences don’t present as many vulnerabilities to interaction.
So, if your group has an issue with Infect, then that’s sad, but you always have stronger strategies that are available to you.
In my mind, if you hadn’t had Delirium in that spot with Blightsteel, your group would be of the exact opposite opinion about Infect, without anything of the rules of Infect in the format having changed. Evidently, they just don’t like people winning. Nothing you can do about that, because after all, winning is the objective of the game.
You might notice of those 9 cards, only 3 are actually creatures that have infect naturally (4, if you count the manland). The rest are granting infect to an arbitrary other creature.
The most effective infect decks I've seen have Skithyrix as the commander, run Blightsteel in the 99, and they might have Tainted Strike and/or Grafted Exoskeleton as well. Mostly, one-shot with Blightsteel or a Hatred-powered Skithyrix are the way to go.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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Rafiq of the Many: Blighted Agent or Spinebiter with exalted. You only need to give Blighted Agent +3/+0 or Spinebiter +1/+0 with Rafiq out.
Doran the Siege Tower: Tangle Angler, Priests of Norn, Shriek Raptor, and Blightwidow all come to mind as possible options in Doran.
Animar, Soul of Elements: Blightsteel. Nuff said. I really don't consider that an "infect" deck as much as a surprise wincon, though.
Ezuri, Claw of Progress: Most infect creatures have power 2 or less. Infect creatures love +1/+1 counters. Proliferate lets you add an additional poison counter to players already poisoned (and an experience counter to yourself).
Marath, Will of the Wild and Ghave, Guru of Spores: Moar +1/+1 counters!
Kaseto, Orochi Archmage and Nylea, God of the Hunt: Giving everything the shade ability or "can't be blocked" is great for infect. (Kaseto's really fun with Blight Mamba.)
Also, any +1/+1 counter-themed deck with blue should at least consider Viral Drake as a matter of principle.
Finally, there's attacking with something with 9 power and making it ten if you're not blocked.
On phasing:
I played a single Putrefax as my only infect creature in The Mimeoplasm and managed to one-shot a guy with it out of nowhere with Entomb. It felt way too dirty for my taste, and my group weren`t happy about it and started targeting me heavily after that, so I took it out. Fact of the matter is that it might almost as well be something without infect, such as maybe a Groundbreaker with Death`s Shadow counters on it, swinging for lethal at that point in the game, but it just feels so much cheaper with infect.
Generally speaking I don`t like playing with or against EDH decks that win out of nowhere. When we are four people gathered around a table for fun on a night off, and we are done shuffling our hundred card decks, I want the game to last, and I don`t want anyone to lose early. That`s just me though, YMMV in your group.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
I think the real problem is perpetual board stall, which is almost inherent for low power tables. If one guy stumbles and gets chipped or poisoned out of the game it might take more than an hour for one of the remaining decks to snowball enough for the fair beatdown victory.
Well, what do you have to lose from relegating Infect into the category of things that are appropriate for these "battlecruiser" games, and into this category you have for "faster/better" strategies? What is the difference? Why do you never, ever see Doomsday combos that are "counterspell or die", but you keep seeing Blightsteel?
I don't get it. On a table where everyone is pulling punches, why are some punches pulled but not others. Answer me this question and I will gladly use it to avoid getting a bunch of angry PM's and so on when someone decides that what I did wasn't fair.
The best part of Commander deckbuilding is to use cards that in combination with your commander turn the synergy level over 9000.
As for the advice: adapt to your meta: run more instant speed removal / disruption. Creature destruction, bounce, fog effects. Whatever fits your deck. If you have trouble interacting with your opponent when you need to it's your deck that is the problem because you need to be able to do so against non-infect decks as well. Which cards are best for this depends on your commander.
I run Xenagod as one of my decks myself and have to run more enchantment hate than I want to because Grave Pact effects are popular in my meta and Grave Pact + instant speed sacrifice outright wrecks Xenagod. Of course i'd rather not, but it's the cost of doing business with Xenagod.
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
What about " He didn't have the right answer at the right time so he genuinely lost fair and square?" Like you do against combo if you don't have a counterspell, or a green mass pump spell if you don't have a fog etc?
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
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Multiple people have already said 10 is fine. If 10 does not work for you then that is fine too. If you all decide to play underpowered decks because that's what you like and all of you feel infect is too strong / fast for the way you want to play then feel free to change this rule. But it is the way your group decides to approach the game that makes it problematic for you in the first place so your meta has everything to do with it. As multiple people have already stated, 10 is not a problem if you play by the 'official' rules.
As for someone dieing early on, I know it sucks but it just happens sometimes. I understand why you would want to try and keep everybody playing but this is first and foremost the deck pilot's responsibility. If you have no defense you will get picked on. What if the black player drops a turn 3 Necropotence and proceeds to draw 35 cards. Is not attacked until everyone is in the single digit life totals? To keep him in the game?
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
Also, someone who stumbles a little out of the gates can -and often will- get picked off by any number of things. Infect is in no way unique there.
Thats in general not fun, so its fine to increase the required infect to whatever amount.
20 is so high, that winning with the infect creatures is usually not working out, unless you power it with some form of "combo" (in which case, you probably will win anyway, as its just another combo in the sea of other combos).
Really nobody wants games that end with a player hitting with an infect 1/1 and just +4/+4 and berserk that creature turn 2/3.
In the end you want interesting games, and the usual Infect deck doesnt provide that (same reason life is put to 40, simply to avoid people getting crushed by aggro decks).
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And how much did your opponents enjoy that game?
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
About as much as I do when they win turn 5.
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But "in general" people dislike these kind of decks that just attack and pump a creature to win.
I dislike the "obvisious" combos in EDH aswell, the same ***** that just wins, i like games in which cards and combos win i never seen before ; but that happens more and more rarely, if you know more cards and combos.
But the best kind of game is a surprising game, moments when you go "ok what does THIS card actually do".
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