Mint Poison Frog

Lately I have been working on a green/black infect deck.  It’s been good at times, but also very awkward with the mana.  The end goal of the deck is to poison the opponent to death.  This is no easy task as the poison creatures are usually very weak compared to their regular damage-dealing counterparts.  I mean come on, Cyst Bearer, really?

The best two poison creatures I have found thus far are Phyrexian Crusader and Putrefax.  Sure, Skithryx is great but to effectively cast, haste, and regenerate, you’re talking 8 mana! So I mulled over my options and ended up going with the more low-cost and value-oriented choices: Necropede, Thrummingbird (I wish he had infect, and I may replace him soon), Phyrexian Crusader, and Viridian Corrupter.

Now, I went many different directions with this deck and mulled over the options quite a bit.  Nothing seemed to work with it, so I’m entombing it in concrete until New Phyrexia comes out.  I may diddle with it before then but since I can’t do any MTGO testing, I doubt it will see life before NPH.  Here’s the list I had the last time I checked:

4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Putrefax
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Forest
2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Phyrexian Crusader
3 Sphere of the Suns
4 Inkmoth Nexus
3 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Sign in Blood
2 Swamp
1 Forest
3 Forest
1 Swamp
3 Go for the Throat
4 Phyrexian Vatmother
4 Swamp
4 Necropede
1 Swamp
4 Viridian Corrupter

Sideboard
4 Memoricide
2 Obstinate Baloth
4 Phyrexian Hydra
2 Pistus Strike
3 Duress

I imported the list straight from MTGO, so I apologize for the formatting. Plus wordpress is being really wonky with me lately when I cut and paste from anywhere, which is odd.  
I'm going to work on another post and see if I have the same issues. Now I'm off to wrangle some kids!

Big Red Lasts!

Yay, I made it through the semeseter alive! Over the next couple weeks I will make a concerted effort to focus on the blog and hopefully keep it going when I head back to grad school for summer classes in May.

I wrote my last post on April 15th and posted it sometime on April 16th. In that post I outlined a deck I had just started working on, in the style of the old Wildfire decks with artifact mana and high-cost finishers.  An interesting development, even though I know it had nothing to do with my little ole blog post, was the top two finishing decks at the Michigan qualifier for Nationals (I live in Michigan).  Check these bad boys out:

Winner – Travis Cullum

Main Deck

4 Inferno Titan
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Tumble Magnet
4 Koth of the Hammer
3 Sphere of the Suns
3 Kuldotha Phoenix
3 Kargan Dragonlord
2 Burst Lightning
1 Chandra Nalaar
20 Mountain
4 Tectonic Edge

Sideboard
4 Tunnel Ignus
2 Brittle Effigy
2 Pyroclasm
2 Slagstorm
3 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Contagion Clasp

Runner-Up – Chris Pait

Main Deck
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Koth of the Hammer
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Tumble Magnet
4 Inferno Titan
4 Kuldotha Phoenix
3 Cyclops Gladiator
3 Slagstorm
2 Comet Storm
2 Contagion Clasp
2 Arc Trail
21 Mountain
4 Tectonic Edge

Sideboard
3 Manic Vandal
3 Mark of Mutiny
3 Ricochet Trap
3 Tunnel Ignus
2 Ratchet Bomb
1 Slagstorm

How intriguing! I’d like to think I was at least with the curve if not ahead of it on this one.  I was probably barking up the wrong tree with the Destructive Force focus of my version, and this deck certainly takes advantage of money invested. With my deck I was focusing more on budget cards and less on cards like Koth of the Hammer (~$24) and Inferno Titan (~$13).  But this version is clearly superior to what I concocted.  I think I just took the proliferate mechanic a little bit too far. Had I focused more on the powerful red cards in the format and not thought about the money I may have very well come up with a similar list.

Going forward I am going to try to sharpen my play to keep myself from bombing in PEs and drafts while limiting the amount of money I spend on the game in general. This will hopefully enable me to make some long-term gains in terms of my collection, which always seems to be inadequate.  I sure hope they reprint Titans in M12, I’ll need to pull them out of packs in draft/sealed because $15+ apiece (and forget about Primeval!) is way too much in my opinion.

Next time I’ll run over the new deck I’m working on, GB Infect.