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Infect

Introduction

Infect is a combo deck that looks a lot like a tempo deck. It has a very fast goldfish that finishes the opponent in a very swift blow with poison counters. This is backed up by card draw and countermagic, hence the close relationship to tempo decks. Don’t be fooled, it may sound like one of those decks that tries to execute multiple game plans and excels at none, but Infect is a serious threat to a lot of legacy metagames. This deck’s unique nature makes it a beloved deck for many. There’s a ton of mechanics and game features to discover and master before anyone would get tired of this deck. A steep learning curve indeed, but a very rewarding one. The deck is heavily underplayed and that’s a strength when no one comes prepared.

Budget

Price: ~ 800 EUR / 900 USD

Playable from 800 EUR / 900 USD

Updated December 2023

Most recent deck lists: here.

How does Infect work?

Sources: to get proper information for this article, I referenced Sam Dams (basically the face of Infect) and his guide for Eternal Durdles Youtube Channel. I’m not an Infect player but I find it important to provide proper information, so I try to reference deck experts when they are available, and in this case Sam was happy to provide his insights!

As stated in the introduction, Infect is a combat-oriented combo deck that wins by applying 10 poison counters to an opponent. The cards that enable this are:

  • Glistener Elf
  • Blighted Agent
  • Inkmoth Nexus

All of these creatures have the Infect mechanic and when they deal damage to an opponent, they receive poison counters instead of damage. If they have 10, they lose the game. Of course, attacking 10 times doesn’t sound super effective. Unsurprisingly, the deck plays cards that make the creatures bigger. Embiggen, Invigorate and Berserk are the current “pump spells” of choice. Every now and then, good pump spells get printed and this suite changes a bit. Noble Hierarch is another pump spell of sorts and acceleration slots really well in this deck, too. Last but not least, there’s another classic: Pendelhaven.

The rest of the shell

Alongside the obvious threats and their accompanying pump spells, this deck has a shell with protection spells as well as cantrips. Cards you’ll see in Infect decks:

  • Force of Will. 4x, no-brainer. You need it to either protect your own combo, prevent the rare faster deck to win before you can, or keep annoying hate pieces out of the way.
  • Daze, 4x, same story as Force of Will.
  • Brainstorm – Everybody loves this card, maybe short of the people who have never cast it.
  • Ponder – Card selection, card draw, pitches to Force.. What else does a blue deck want?
  • Legolas’s Quick Reflexes – the latest addition to this deck. It’s relatively early to be so outspoken, but I think this card offers basically everything this deck wants. It’s uncounterable protection and occasionally removal, too!
  • Fetchlands
  • Dual lands, which can be replaced by shocks at first.

Acquiring Infect

This deck is one that might be interesting build from its Modern counterpart. The shell is basically the same, apart from the mana base, Berserk and Force of Will (and obviously more cards, but they are not expensive). Many cards of this deck are luckily quite cheap. Noble Hierarch is the most expensive creature, and even this card isn’t that expensive anymore due to not seeing much play in Modern and being printed into oblivion.

Let’s get to the part where we list the expensive cards that are expensive(ish), but we do want to buy them, because we want to play an awesome deck:

  • Noble Hierarch
  • Berserk
  • Force of Will
  • Legolas’s Quick Reflexes
  • Green fetch lands
  • Tropical Island (Breeding Pool)
  • Savannah (Temple Garden)
  • Flusterstorm
  • Force of Vigor
  • Seeds of Innocence
  • Sylvan Library

The best way to build this deck is by replacing dual lands with shocks. This will cost you some win percentages, especially against agressive decks like Delver, but in many matchups this is perfectly fine because you’re winning before the loss of life actually matters.

Upgrade paths

Despite the blue “Cantrip Cartel” cards in the deck, there isn’t a super obvious upgrade path. Things that come to mind are Omni-Tell or Thassa Shift (which isn’t really an established archetype).

Additional Resources