The Ultimate Guide to Infect
Lately I’ve Begun to Realize the Difference Between an “Open Deck” and an “Invitational Deck. ” I Live in the Deep South Where the Open Series Is Rarelyclose...
Lately I’ve begun to realize the difference between an “Open deck” and an “Invitational deck.” I live in the deep south where the Open Series is rarely
close enough to travel to. This year I’ve played on the Open Series five weekends, entering in both Standard of Legacy each time. That’s ten events, and I
made it to the top 8 of only one of them. If I can top 8 each of the Invitationals, why can’t I top 8 more Opens?
I’ve been mistakenly playing my “Invitational decks” in the Opens.
What is an Open deck? Opens are huge and Legacy is the format with the widest variety of decks. You can only afford one loss to make top 8, which means
your deck needs to be capable of winning nearly every matchup. Your power level needs to be high, and your deck needs the tools to solve the problems
Legacy throws at you.
Miracles is an example of a good Open deck. Shardless BUG is another. If you read Gerry T’s article, he explained how the deck is strong and
versatile. Lately we’ve seen a bunch of Legacy Open top 8s and wins from both archetypes.
This past weekend in New Jersey, I adjusted U/G Infect to have a few more tools against the decks that were giving me the most trouble. I certainly lost a
game in the finals against Reid Duke where I drew an embarrassing Viridian Corrupter which was far too slow to matter. The white sideboard cards didn’t see
much play, and I got hurt by drawing the maindeck Savannah when I needed a Tropical Island, but in general I was fortunate enough to have favorable
matchups where I didn’t need the extra tools I was splashing for while not diluting the deck enough to turn my good matchups into poor ones.
Moving forward for the Open Series in St. Louis, I like my current build of Infect. The U/G build without Green Sun’s Zenith and the white splash would’ve
likely been slightly better for the Invitational given the matchups I got, but I did want to change the build up enough to keep people guessing. I
especially liked when people played around “the one-of maindeck Stifle” when it wasn’t present in my 75 last weekend.
Creatures (13)
Lands (20)
Spells (27)
I wrote a bit about U/G Infect and the possibilities of a white splash back in 2013, which you can check out here.
It’s been awhile since that article, and it was also a split piece with Boss Sligh, so this time I want to go more in-depth about Legacy Infect
specifically. Included are brief overviews of the popular decks in Legacy that you’ll likely face and that I’ve played in the past. Legacy has somewhere
upwards of 100 playable decks that are capable of winning a tournament. I’ll go over 30ish of them, which seems like a lot, but Legacy is a format where
you can play a different deck every round of a tournament, and you have to have a plan versus all of them.
What Does the Deck do?
You’re trying to give your opponent ten poison counters with Infect creatures. The Infect creatures are all 1/1s, but you take advantage of how effective
increasing their power is compared to pumping a non-Infect creature via Noble Hierarch’s exalted trigger, Pendelhaven, a kicked Vines of Vastwood,
Invigorate, and Berserk.
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How do you Categorize this Deck?
As Infect is a deck that’s capable of killing on turn 2 with Daze, Vines of Vastwood, or Force of Will backup, it’s easy to see the combo element. With the
blue permission spells it also has a bit of control over what your opponent is doing. In longer games you can pick at them with two poison at a time with
Pendelhaven or Noble Hierarch and not have to “move in” at all, playing reactively with how they intend on stopping you.
Robert Thorne covers electric vehicle innovations, autonomous driving systems, global mobility trends, and automotive engineering developments.
