Modern

Can You Count to 10?

Introductions
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My name is Zak Kolasa, but my friends call me Arbor Kolasa. I have two places that I call home: Windsor, Ontario and Thunder Bay, Ontario. I haven’t been playing Magic for a long time, but I have been playing for good times. I began in Dragon’s Maze, about two and a half years ago. If anyone remembers what a Dragon’s Maze draft was like, you’ll know that it was a hard time to learn how to play Magic, but with the help of my friends I learned how to play.

I started out as your everyday kid at FNM looking for the biggest and baddest green creature that I could play in my ramp deck. At the time, I didn’t know a lot about other formats outside of Sealed, Draft and Standard. Through the majority of Standard I have played R/G/X decks, partially because I am a university student, but also because those colour combinations suit me as a person.

Now, let’s fast forward to February 2015. I had just finished my first true Modern Deck, Naya Zoo with all the fun stuff: [card]Noble Hierarch[/card], [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card], and [card]Knight of the Reliquary[/card]. Eventually [card]Tarmogoyf[/card] would be added. I’d played in about 10 Modern tournaments when I decided that Naya Zoo wasn’t as much fun as I wanted it to be, and didn’t have particularly thrilling draws. Around this time my friend Max, who is predominately a Tron Mage, told me that he had just lost to Infect. He recounted that it was a rough match because he couldn’t interact in a meaningful way. The next words out of his mouth were, “if you ever build Infect, I will unfriend you on Facebook.” To me this sounded like a challenge. The next week I borrowed an Infect deck from another friend. I went 2-2. Despite the 50-50 record, I fell in love with the deck.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Infect, infect is a creature keyword that reads: “this creature deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters and to players in the form of poison counters.” This leads to the question you’re probably asking: what are poison counters? When a creature with Infect deals damage to you, you receive poison counters instead of losing life; you get one counter for each point of damage the creature would deal. Be careful when playing against Infect, because if you have only ten poison counters, you lose the game! Yeah, I know it doesn’t seem fair, but Infect’s creatures are probably just 1/1s that can’t do a whole lot, while you probably have better creatures and ten different kill spells in your deck. However, don’t underestimate Infect’s little 1/1s.

Now, the part you’ve all been waiting for:

Building Infect
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The first thing that you need to ask yourself is: what colour combination do you want to play? The normal colour variations are mono-green, green/blue, green/black, and the combination of the three, green/blue/black. The shell we are going to build now is green/blue with a light splash of black for some sideboard tech.

The most important thing to remember and learn is how to sequence your spells and abilities. The second most important thing to know is when to switch gears from infect damage to normal damage. This happens mostly in two separate cases: either all of the infect creatures you have drawn have been killed or otherwise dealt with, or your opponent plays the biggest trump spell against Infect, [card]Melira, Sylvok Outcast[/card].

UG Infect
[deck]
[Lands]
3 Breeding Pool
2 Forest
4 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Pendelhaven
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Apostle’s Blessing
2 Become Immense
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Groundswell
4 Might of Old Krosa
2 Mutagenic Growth
2 Rancor
2 Slip Through Space
4 Vines of Vastwood
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Blighted Agent
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Glistener Elf
4 Noble Hierarch
2 Spellskite
[/Creatures]
[/deck]

The first thing we are going to look at is the creature package.

Creatures

Blighted Agent_Final

Noble Hierarch doesn’t have Infect itself, but it powers the deck and makes a huge difference. Hierarch does two different things for the deck. First, it provides white, blue and green mana; while the white is rarely necessary, all three of these colours are important in the deck. Secondly, it has exalted, which pumps our other creatures if they attack alone. If you have multiple [card]Noble Hierarch[/card]s out this ability will stack, giving the attacking creature +1/+1 for each Hierarch that you have in play. Be aware that this is a triggered ability that your opponent can respond to.

Glistener Elf is the most important creature in the deck. It is what allows the deck to kill your opponent on turn 2 if they have no interaction. [card]Glistener Elf[/card] is a 1/1 for G with infect and we are going to play 4, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Blighted Agent is a 1/1 UNBLOCKABLE creature with infect for 1U. This creature is the most frustrating for your opponents because it’s unblockable, which means that we need pump spells and protection spells to keep it alive and it will win the game. We are going to play 4 as well.

Spellskite
, a 0/4 for 2, has the ability to pay U or 2 life to redirect spells and abilities to it, making it a lifesaver for our infect creatures. This guy is also a big trump card against decks that rely on pumping their creatures and giving them abilities such as Bogles and occasionally Affinity. Additionally, it sucks up the removal spells that our opponent uses on our other creatures. Some people play around with the numbers between sideboard and main board, but 2 in the mainboard and 1 in the sideboard has been working very well for me.

Alternative creature options
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Additional infect creatures that are green, blue or colourless include [card]Blight Mamba[/card], [card]Ichorclaw Myr[/card], [card]Viridian Corrupter[/card], [card]Blightwidow[/card], [card]Chained Throatseeker[/card], [card]Cystbearer[/card], [card]Phyrexian Hydra[/card], [card]Phyrexian Swarmlord[/card], Putrefax, Rot Wolf, [card]Spinebiter[/card], [card]Tangle Angler[/card], [card]Tel-Jilad Fallen[/card], [card]Viral Drake[/card], [card]Viridian Betrayers[/card], [card]Blightsteel Colossus[/card], [card]Core Prowler[/card], [card]Corpse Cur[/card], [card]Necropede[/card], [card]Phyrexian Digester[/card], [card]Phyrexian Juggernaut[/card], [card]Plague Myr[/card], and [card]Vector Asp[/card]. Now, many of those are not worth playing because their mana cost is too high, but there are some that we can use.

[card]Ichorclaw Myr[/card] is up for consideration as it is a 1/1 for 2 that gets bigger when it is blocked. This is a really cool trick that most opponents forget about and it’s a combo when we get a Rancor equipped to it. Ichorclaw also allows you to win through a [card]Blood Moon[/card] even if you don’t have any basic lands in play. [card]Viridian Corrupter[/card] is a creature that we play in the sideboard to kill artifacts and comes in against Affinity, Lantern Control, and Blue Moon if you are on the play. I like it as a one-of, but it can be a two-of.

Pseudo-Creatures
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[card]Dryad Arbor[/card] is a 1/1 Land Creature — [card]Forest[/card] Dryad. When you sequence your lands, keep in mind that [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] will have summoning sickness when it enters the battlefield because it is a creature. There are a couple of different reasons to play this card in the deck. The first is against Liliana of the Veil’s -2 ability that makes us sacrifice a creature. Using fetchlands, we can go get [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] at instant speed to sacrifice to the ability and keep our infect creature. Another reason that we want to have [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] is because we can fetch out of the deck if our opponent kills everything else. Consider it a trick up our sleeve. Killing our opponent with regular damage is always an option, one that is best used against opponents that show little respect for their life totals like Zooicide or Death Shadow Aggro.

There are some really cool interactions to keep in mind when we have [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] in play. The first interaction is with [card]Blood Moon[/card]. Many people believe that [card]Blood Moon[/card] makes [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] a [card]Mountain[/card] as it is a non-basic land, and they are right; but they also assume that it loses its creature type and stops being a 1/1. This is where they are wrong. Blood Moon’s ability changes lands’ land subtypes, but not their other types, so [card]Dryad Arbor[/card] becomes a Land Creature – [card]Mountain[/card] Dryad that is green and has base power and toughness of 1/1. A similar thing happens if our opponent attaches [card]Spreading Seas[/card] to [card]Dryad Arbor[/card]. I have won a number of games because of these interactions.

The other pseudo-creature and all-star of the deck is [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card], which has flying and infect and doesn’t normally die to sorcery speed removal. As a land, it also dodges [card]Abrupt Decay[/card], one of the best pieces of removal in Modern.

Spells
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Now, on to the fun stuff. Similar to Burn’s logic that you need 7 Bolts to kill your opponent from 20, Infect’s logic is that you need 3 pump spells to kill your opponent (plus an infect creature). The best pump spells give +4/+4 to a creature, but there are some stipulations that need to be met first.

The two best pump spells are [card]Might of Old Krosa[/card] and [card]Groundswell[/card]. [card]Groundswell[/card] gives +4/+4 when you have a landfall trigger and Might gives +4/+4 when it is cast on your main phase; otherwise, they only give +2/+2. Now if we do some math, casting one of each on the same creature will put our opponent at only at 9 Infect damage, and this is where [card]Mutagenic Growth[/card] is used, because you can pay G or 2 life to cast it.

To go a little deeper and add some versatility, we also play Vines of the Vastwood. The text on this card is often misunderstood. It reads as follows: “Target creature can’t be the target of spells or abilities your opponents control. If Vines of the Vastwood was kicked that creature gets +4/+4 until end of turn.” So we have another set of +4/+4 pump spells that also give protection. To make it even better, this can be used on your opponent’s creatures to protect them from beneficial things like modular (in Affinity), Kiki-Jiki and [card]Restoration Angel[/card] (in Kiki Chord), or pump spells (in the mirror match).

The big payoff pump spell is [card]Become Immense[/card]. The hard part of [card]Become Immense[/card] is getting five cards in the graveyard for delve. On turn 2 this equates to two fetchlands and three other spells, two of which had to be cast using Phyrexian mana (so either Gut Shot, [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card], [card]Mutagenic Growth[/card], or [card]Surgical Extraction[/card]).

[card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] is a staple in the deck because it let us look at our opponent’s hand, draw a card, and fill the graveyard for delve. Seeing our opponent’s hand gives us full information to work around and bait out removal spells in the order that we want to deal with them in.

Now that we have talked about the main board, let’s look at the sideboard.

Sideboard
[deck]
2 Spell Pierce
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Twisted Image
2 Nature’s Claim
1 Viridian Corrupter
1 Apostle’s Blessing
2 Hurkyl’s Recall
2 Echoing Truth
2 Wild Defiance
[/deck]

This sideboard gives a good range of options against the new hyper-aggro meta. We have [card]Natural State[/card], [card]Hurkyl’s Recall[/card], and [card]Viridian Corrupter[/card] to hate on Affinity. We have [card]Echoing Truth[/card] to deal with [card]Eldrazi Mimic[/card]s, [card]Lingering Souls[/card] tokens and other permanents that appear in multiples; it also handles Melira. [card]Apostle’s Blessing[/card] is great against Affinity and any deck that has blockers or removal, while [card]Spell Pierce[/card] is ideal against decks like Blue Moon that are loaded with removal and counterspells. [card]Twisted Image[/card] kills opposing [card]Spellskite[/card]s, [card]Noble Hierarch[/card]s, Memnites, and [card]Birds of Paradise[/card]. [card]Wild Defiance[/card] shines against [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]s and other damage-based removal. Lastly, [card]Surgical Extraction[/card] is the spiciest and most useful sideboard card because it can remove all the removal and hate that Infect has a difficult time getting past.

Matchups
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The worst matchup of all is Jund because it has the perfect combination of creatures, hand disruption, and removal. To beat Jund you need to draw close to the perfect hand with two of everything (creatures, protection and pump spells). [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card] is the best creature against Jund because it dodges [card]Abrupt Decay[/card].

Burn is another tough matchup because it attacks our life total, which we sometimes take for granted because of how fast we are trying to kill our opponent. Burn can also remove our creatures with [card]Lightning Bolt[/card] and [card]Searing Blaze[/card]. You pretty much need the same draw against burn that you need against Jund, but you can get by with well-timed pump spells instead of protection spells.

American Control decks are a swing match that generally goes to the person on the play. This is because their deck is packed with removal spells, from the cheap Bolt, [card]Path to Exile[/card], and [card]Lightning Helix[/card] to the later-game [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] and [card]Gideon Jura[/card]. To beat this deck you need to time your spells well. You can rely on [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card] to get the win as long as they haven’t resolved a [card]Gideon Jura[/card].

Affinity is a 50-50 match. The winner is normally who plays first in game one or who is more explosive. Both our deck and their deck have the potential to win on turn 3 or 4 consistently. If you can win game 1 and draw a [card]Hurkyl’s Recall[/card] game 2 or 3 then you should be able to take the match. Affinity has limited removal but endless blockers.

Tron is an extremely favourable matchup as they have almost no early interaction and we can generally kill them on turn 3 with no problem. If they play a tron land and pass turn 1 then we can lead with a [card]Glistener Elf[/card]. This match is very hard to lose as long as you can kill them before tron is assembled.

Eldrazi is another favourable matchup as they have limited interaction. The mono-black version has a couple more removal spells than the U/R or colourless variants, and the U/R list has a little bit more resilient as it has a flier to block [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card], but generally all we have to do is dodge the amazing draw of multiple [card]Eldrazi Mimic[/card]s or [card]Reality Smasher[/card]s plus [card]Eye of Ugin[/card] and [card]Eldrazi Temple[/card]s. The key to winning is to be swift.

Another extremely favourable match is Soul Sisters. We don’t care about our opponent’s life gain because we can kill them with poison. The key to this match is to protect your infect creature.

Abzan/Junk Midrange is a tricky match. They have a good suite of blockers and removal spells. [card]Lingering Souls[/card] is a big problem for us, but that is why we play [card]Echoing Truth[/card] as it can bounce all the tokens. [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card] also gives us an advantage by making [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] useless. The key to this match is to protect a [card]Blighted Agent[/card] or keep spirit tokens off the table so [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card] can get through.

The next deck is an interesting one: the Abzan [card]Collected Company[/card] deck with [card]Melira, Sylvok Outcast[/card], [card]Kitchen Finks[/card], and [card]Viscera Seer[/card]. The problem with this deck is that it can gain infinite life and deal infinite damage with [card]Murderous Redcap[/card] while protecting itself with Melira, a trump card against Infect. This match depends solely on whether opponent can draw Melira and get the combo underway. The key to this match is to keep Melira off the table.

Note that Melira gets complicated when it interacts with [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card]. If our opponent controls a Melira and we activate our [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card], it becomes an 1/1 artifact creature with flying and infect, since the timestamp of the effect causing it to gain infect is more recent than Melira’s ability that would cause it to lose infect. However, Melira’s other two abilities still apply, preventing poison counters and -1/-1 counters from being placed on Melira’s controller and their creatures. The [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card] now won’t cause damage to be marked on creatures or life loss to players, since it has infect, but it also won’t add any -1/-1 or poison counters because Melira is in play. It effectively becomes useless as an attacker.

Merfolk and Elves are similar decks. They both attempt to put as many creatures into play that pump the others and then swing through and kill you with forestwalk or islandwalk. The best way to beat them is with trample or unblockable. I have achieved more turn 2 kills against Merfolk than any other deck. Just be careful, because these two decks are essentially combo decks that can kill you on turn 3 or 4 depending on how their creatures come out.

Most other combo decks like [card]Ad Nauseam[/card], [card]Scapeshift[/card], [card]Gifts Ungiven[/card], and Griselshoalbrand are just slower than Infect.

I hope this help you count to 10, kill your opponents on turns 2-5, win as many games as I have, and have as much fun!

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