Psuedo Newb and the Anti Infect Deck

I hate poison. It used to be an OK mechanic that had a little flavor to it but in the post Phyrexian victory it's a mechanic that now runs rampantly across the colors and takes a 20 point game and makes it a 10 point game.

My first standard deck tournament was two weeks ago, I was playing a slightly modified Innistrad event deck and the first round was against a very nice young man and his mono-black infect deck.

*Newb Note - mono black means it's all black cards and mono-black infect means that it tries to win through making sure the opponent dies from 10 poison counters instead the loss of 20 life points. It might have more ways to win than that.


It was my only shut out of that event. I had nothing to stop the swarm of tiny infect creatures and land and by the time I could do anything I was dead by round 4. I'm sure I could have delayed things a bit if I'd known how to play better but it was no fun to play against and the Steampunk Marchioness (My friend who started playing recently) tells me that it's not really fun to actually play the infect deck and win. It feels like cheating.

So I realize I still haven't explained my "Geek Origin Story" but I am a returning player but with a very different kind of appreciation and focus for the game than when I danced here the first time. There are two things that made me kind of dislike "new" magic; Planeswalkers and infect.

I dislike Planeswalkers on flavor grounds.

Planeswalkers are the designated hitters of Magic. The kind of cool thing before was you ARE the planeswalker, you're pitting your magic skills against your opponent who is also a planeswalker - you are not a glorified "character" coming in to "help" in someone else's novel nor are some fictional characters making guest appearances in your story like some sort of officially sanctioned Mary Sue Fanfic.

On a mechanic level the "loyalty counters" thing took me a long time to even begin to understand - they came in for free with X counters on them, they got additional counters out of thin air for doing things to you and when they spent the counters they could make just doing what they wanted to do they could cost you the game. Then on top of that they weren't creatures so most of your removal spells don't work on them. Combine this with the fact that acquiring any of the suckers was either near impossible or costly on the secondary market and it became pretty clear - the one who got the planeswalker out wins. Or if you're playing casual the one who owns a planes walker wins. In limited sealed deck set ups finding any of the two Innistrad planeswalkers is a win.

So it's not surprising that they were ripe for abuse. The first psuedo newb that played one against me ( whom I assumed knew the rules better than I did) used more than one ability in a turn making a card I was already biased against look worse. It took playing against one in a tournament for me to find out some of the limitations and a trip to the third floor to find out the rest.

Here are the limitations:

• They still count as a permanent - anything that affects permanants on the board affects planeswalkers.
• The are affected by the "legendary rule" you can't have more than one out at a time - if two show up they both go to the graveyard and they go by "subtype" not full name so Jace takes out Jace no matter which two Jaces are facing each other.
• They can only be activated once per turn on the main phase when you would cast a sorcerey and on the second main phase when you can also cast a sorcery. (I'm definately still working on learning how to use second main phases properly. )
• You can declare attackers directly even though the player with the planeswalker can use it's creatures to block
• The best way to fight a planeswalker it to get it out of the game as quickly as possible - Oblivion ring, bramblebush, blue counterspells so far are what I've used to make them go away. I hate the critters the way some women hate mice.

After some practice and the subsequent successful destruction of planeswalkers in FNM (Friday Night Magic Tournament) and casual games I now realize that they aren't unaswerable but I also realize that you have to take up at least 4 - 8 cardslots of removal to make sure you get rid of them - at least at my current level of play. If I hadn't been playing the event decks I might never have learned how to get rid of them.

I also notice that I have over 800 cards that I've been collecting since I started at the beginning of February and I have not opened a single planeswalker. I find it difficult to justify spending a bunch of money on a single card when as a newb building up a card collection I could by several boosters instead. On the other hand when I played constructed there wasn't a single matchup where I didn't have to answer a planeswalker. It might not be a "broken" mechanic, but it is a something.

They are banned at the kitchen table because it's really not fair until more than one person has a planeswalker and a player who's name on the blog shall now be Deputy Dog keeps playing his anyway. The other thing we all hate at the kitchen table is infect. I actually wouldn't mind it if there were a way to remove poison counters but you can't - and that's by design. You can't heal up from them you can only stop acquiring them. They get to float around in the ethersphere because they weren't doing much harn in the competitive tournament scene. The reason for that is everyone there tries to kill each other in 4 rounds or less - so in tournament trying to cut the game in half still makes it a "long-term" kind of strategy. But in multi-player infect still kills you in 10, in casual because there are no answers other than quickly killing your opponent or a swarm of creatures including flying to block them infect always wins. Always, always always. Unless you have the one card that stops poison - Melira the Outcast. There might be one or two other answers in everything else but anything that "removes counters" in legacy or vintage got rewritten to make sure it specifically excludes poison counters.

Needless to say that mono-black infect is currently the poor man's choice to win quickly in the metagame of standard right now. I knew as soon as I saw the article on Wizards that there would be more. I figured I'm not good enough to outpace a competitive mono-black infect deck - I need to understand Melira and if she would work.

So she's also a legendary creature which would give me practice for the day I'm deep enough into the dark side that I might have multiple designated hitters . . . . I mean planeswalkers of my own. I took apart my two white sealed deck Innistrad creations - neither of which performed well but both of which taught me something and tried to combine them with green to see if I could make an anti -infect deck.

The result ended up being something that might be the beginning of understanding how things work but I'm pretty sure isn't competitive

Creatures

4 Melira, Sylvok Outcast

4 Avacyn's Pilgrim

2 Doomed Traveler

2 Selfless Cathar

1 Champion of the Parish

1 Gideon's Lawkeeper

1 Grand Abolisher

1 Mayor of Avabruck

2 Geist-Honored Monk

1 Garruk's Horde

2 Unruly Mob

Spells & Artifacts

2 Sharpened Pitchfork

1 Doubling Chant

2 Oblivion Ring

1 Midnight Haunting

1 Demonmail Hauberk

1 Tower of Calamities

1 Accorder's Shield

2 Caravan Vigil

1 Angel of Flight Alabaster

2 Remember the Fallen

2 Mulch

1 Parallel Lives

1 Elixir of Immortality

Land

1 Sunpetal Grove

4 Gavony Township

9 Forest

9 Plains

Last night while keeping the Marchioness company because she needed help staying awake we tested it against the phyrexian Rot from Within event deck. The art of mulliganing became terribly important - even though it was kitchen table ( literally for a change!) we used the tournament mulligan rules. The first time we both mulliganed and went down to 6. I stayed put but shouldn't have, she stayed put and was sitting pretty. With a 2/2 infect creature and a removal card for the first thing I could put out she killed in in four turns with poison. My own management of my manna burned hand ( Newb Note* Mana burn is when you have to much land and not very much to do with it - thats because you used to take direct damage from untapped land on your own turn)

I was able to get Melira out in turn 3 and she hadn't managed to get a single creature that did damage out. Once Melira was in play the game went on for a really long time and I learned how to use a whole bunch of cards. I only had one plains and no white manna generators otherwise so the game went on for a really long time until the swarn strategy really won after the poison creatures either didn't show up or couldn't do anything.

I'll break down what I learned on the next entry. I also played the dragon deck from duel decks for the first time and played Knights for the first time since May and found out that there were cards I had never drawn in that deck!