Infect.dec

Inspired by my article on the proliferate deck I wanted to have a stab at making a viable infect deck. Previous incarnations have typically been black green base however I feel as if building it more like an affinity deck would be more in line with what the deck is trying to do. There are not a high quantity of infect creatures and a lot of them are pretty awful. With the artifact ones at least you are able to enhance their synergy and power level with other cards quite easily. This is unlike any other deck list article as I have not yet built this bad boy and have no idea how hard it will flop. At best I think it will be slightly worse than normal affinity and at worst it will never look like winning a game and until I have built and played it I wont know. As it wont be better than normal affinity it wont matter how well it performs as it will never see cube play other than these rare fun experiments.

As this is a pre-testing article as it were I can can discuss more easily the reasons why I have included certain things and not others without being biased by how they actually performed. This means the article will be more useful as a way to appreciate how to go about putting together novel new decks but much less useful at detailing the deck in question. Fortunately with it being a guaranteed lower tier deck the failings of the article don't much matter. Here is my initial list for an affinity infect deck:


26 Spells

Mox Opal
Mox Diamond
Mana Crypt

Glistener Elf
Vector Asp
Virulent Sliver
Virulent Wound

Bonesplitter
Chromatic Star
Arcbound Worker
Signal Pest

Springleaf Drum
Mutagenic Growth
Tragic Slip
Terrarion
Blighted Agent
Ichorclaw Myr
Necropede
Plague Myr

Plague Stinger
Cranial Plating
Throne of Geth
Contagion Clasp

Arcbound Ravager

Tumble Magnet

Tezzerets Gambit
14 Lands

Inkmoth Nexus
Seat of the Synod
Vault of Whispers
Tree of Tales

Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
Darksteel Citadel
Ancient Den

Great Furnace
Blinkmoth Nexus
Topical Island
Bayou

Underground Sea
Glimmervoid

It seems a little rich calling this affinity when it has no cards with affinity actually in the deck but never mind. The reasons for using the artifact base are to increase your odds of making a turn one play infect creature and to be able to abuse things like Cranial Plating and Arcbound Ravager for killing blows out of nowhere. Infect creatures not being very good need to come out early and start things going while the path is clear. You only need to get a tiny bit of poison on your opponent to make an inefficient alpha strike an easy way to end the game. If you curve out too slowly you will never have any favourable attacks and will never be in range of the alpha strike. Every single two or lower casting cost infect artifact creature made the cut by default. I highly considered including three mana artifact dorks as they would still reliably come down before turn three but the options are just too terrible. To make up the count of creatures with infect to a high enough count so that you can actually win games means resorting to coloured creatures which weaken the artifact synergies of the deck and hurt the colour demands. I decided to go with only three colours to increase the consistency and picked only the best and cheapest cards from those colours which gave better one drops and evasive two drops. I toyed with the idea of white for Stoneforge Mystic (as Cranial Plating is the best card in the deck) and Lost Leonin however despite the fantastic ratio of infected power to casting cost the vulnerability, lack of evasion and lack of being an artifact makes the Leonin worse than all of the other two drop infectors. He just wont often actually hit anyone and so might as well me a Flensermite...


With all the cheap and good poison and proliferate cards from artifacts, blue, green and black included the deck still had plenty of space. There were some obvious cards to include as filler such as the cheap artifact mana fixing and ramp. With a low land count and both few duals and many colourless lands together with a high coloured card count the Chromatic Star and Terrarion are pretty essential. They also work well with the sacrifice effects in the deck. Springleaf Drum is another cheap colour fixer than has continued use that is made a little better by the non infect creatures in the deck being happier to tap down. Aether Vial was a consideration at this stage as well but is a bit slow for what this deck needs I would wager. The various Mox are all no brainers as well as they fix, ramp and enable (what Crypt lacks in fixing it makes up for in ramp...) Then the obvious equipment come into play, Plating is the reason this deck is viable and is a no brainer. The Bonesplitter is good but less powerful than Rancor, being an artifact and easier to cast however make it the cheap pumper of choice.

The cheap arcbound cards and Signal pest were included as they fit very nicely with the whole theme of the deck, being artifacts and able to pump the other creatures with infect. Although the arcbound guys fail to help the non artifact infectors they work with proliferate nicely and Ravager can end games instantly. Steel Overseer was considered as another pump effect but seemed too slow as well as not working with the non-artifact guys. The final few slots were taken by Tezzeret's Gambit which is easy to cast, gives you more longevity and should help the poison count rise. It isn't really an agro card nor is it cheap enough like Thoughtcast, to be great but given the lack of other poisonous options I am pretty content with it. Tumble Magnet seems pretty good for coming down at the end of you curve and forcing through the last bit of poison. Its synergy with proliferate is neat if not all that huge. My final two spots I filled with Mutagenic Growth and Tragic Slip. Both are used to help force through attacks with your weaker creatures. The Growth is very good as it is always castable and scales very well with infect. Much as I would like to have forced in more green creature pump to help out in combat it is the kind of card that will clog up your hand. In a 40 card deck it is easy to get the ratios of things wrong and I would tend to err on the side of caution with things that require creatures when my creature count is already low. Just two equips and one pump effect (excluding Ravager) may seem a little light and may mean I have less potential power but I believe the consistency boost it offers will be worth the trade off. Tragic Slip is easy to trigger the morbid with and is cheap as chips. Decks like this can just lose the the wrong blockers being in place. It needs coloured mana and has no real synergy with the deck but is the sort of thing you need to be able to win games. Perhaps it would be better as Unsummon as Virulent Wound also requires black.


The worst cards in the deck will be the Virulent Sliver which has poisonous 1 rather than infect and so fails to work well with any of the pump effects on top of being a coloured card. Blinkmoth Nexus might also be too narrow as it only really pumps Inkmoth or gets used as an artifact both of which are quite marginal and perhaps would be better as another fixing land. I have taken some risks with this deck as I know it is already underpowered. Those risks are basically very little longevity and a really thin mana base both in quantity and type. If I find I am losing games to having the wrong coloured mana or just having loads of weak dorks doing nothing then I would cut cards like Blinkmoth and Virulent Sliver for things like City of Brass and beefier cards respectively. My hope is however the deck will consistently make a number of infectors on the first two turns and then either maintain the pressure with a bit of disruption and more guys or end the game suddenly with Plating or Ravager. The best or most important cards in the deck are Cranial Plating, Inkmoth Nexus, Ichorclaw Myr and then probably the other good infectors to include Blighted Agent, Glistener Elf, Necropede, Plagued Myr, Plague Stinger and perhaps even Vector Asp! (which is a tell tale sign in itself about the decks outlook) I'll post how hard I got stomped and by what in the comments when all is done.

Proliferate.dec

I love to base a deck around a new mechanic and despite this deck pre-dating when I started this blog it serves as a good example of that. These kinds of new mechanic style deck very rarely make the A cube as many mechanics are limited to a single block and thus don't have anywhere near the required depth. This means that the decks are slightly underpowered due to including a whole bunch of weak mechanic key word cards that would otherwise never see play. Those cards in turn never being in the A cube don't get a chance to really shine and so as a tribute to cool mechanics at least gives them an opportunity to strut their stuff with the big boys of magic!

I lost every round with this deck rather unsurprisingly although it put up an impressive fight and was refreshingly different and fun. A control poison proliferate deck was also tried but after horribly losing to Necropotence it felt a lot less fun. This deck was full of cards that had very little synergy with each other and were at cross purposes much of the time. I did however manage to cram as many different things with counters in as possible. When your deck can't be tier one you may as well get as much testing of different cards in different situations done! When setting out to build a silly fun deck it is rather a surprise when it puts up a competitive showing. The deck was a quirky agro deck that sacrificed a lot of tempo and consistency for proliferate synergy and trickery.



25 Spells

Everflowing Chalice
Engineered Explosives
Mox Opal

Enclave Cryptologist
Arcbound Worker
Stromkirk Noble

Arcbound Ravager
Power Conduit
Kargan Dragonlord
Lighthouse Chronologist

Pentad Prism
Contagion Clasp
Thrumming Bird
Umezawa's Jitte

Throne of Geth
Fire/Ice
Keldon Marauders

Tumble Magnet
Volt Charge
Steady Progress
Tangle Wire

Jace Beleren
Trinket Mage

Tezzeret's Gambit
Chandra, the Firebrand

15 Land

Sandstone Needles
Saprazzan Skerry
Great Furnace
Seat of the Synod

Izzet Boilerworks
Cascade Bluffs
Steam Vents
Volcanic Island

Scalding Tarn
Shivan Reef
Inkmoth Nexus
Darksteel Citadel

2 Islands
 Mountains


Unsurprisingly most of the wins were Jitte based ones but the deck did feel like it was holding out sufficiently to get to Jitte winning territory. I was most taken a back at how hard the deck was to play with so many things happening with each proliferate that it was awkward planning your ordering. Lots of things were a bit annoying in regards the counters as you had to have at least one to get more. This meant you couldn't expend your lands that added two mana or the Pentad Prism and you had to begin the levelling process with the level up dorks and you had to have charged Jitte etc etc. Choosing when to waste a potential future resource or when to conserve it was really tough, both because the deck style was unfamiliar and because the interactions were all very different. Some boosted your dorks, some ramped you mana and so forth.

I learned several things and had a lot of fun from playing this deck. I confirmed my suspicion that a deck based on arbitrarily proliferating stuff is not viable. I found Contagion Clasp to be a highly viable all round utility card for the a cube. Most decks have a few things that benefit from proliferation and it can be used well against opponents persist creatures, obviously you play Clasp in a non proliferate deck for it being an artifact as well as a cheap creature disruption card however it does often become a great mana sink later in the game. I learnt that being able to level up at instant speed with a proliferate card is a really cool trick that while reasonably hard to conceal it is not looked for by players.

While I might have been stomped on for my silly deck I got more satisfaction from the few wins it managed than I do from auto piloting a known power archetype to a flawless victory. Fun is the aim of playing games after all and so I can heartily recommend using the cube as your forum to scratch all those itches to build silly decks around silly cards.

Top 10 One Drop Beaters

I love a one drop beater, there is no way to get a better tempo boost than making an actual threat on turn one. A selection of the most powerful archetypes involve making reliable early pressure and then maintaining that slight tempo edge long enough to muscle a win. Mono black agro, red deck wins, white weenie, boros, zoo and many more less established or named decks are all variants on the simple theme of winning by making use of tempo. As a group of spells there is a higher proportion of one mana beaters that can easily do more than one per hit than any other group of spells say counter magic or burn spells that make the cube. Only the very weakest like Wild Dog that have too few good homes and have too inconsistent of a drawback are not powerful enough for cube play. One drop mana critters offer a tempo boost much like the pure beaters but in a slightly less direct way. You don't get the tempo boost by beating with your Llanowar Elf and so they won't be featured on this list.



10. Steppe Lynx
9.   Basking Rootwalla
8.   Isamaru, Hound of Konda
7.   Carrion Feeder
6.   Figure of Destiny
5.   Student of Warfare
4.   Gravecrawler
3.   Wild Nacatl
2.   Delver of Secrets
1.   Goblin Guide







So, from the top Goblin Guide is the clear winner. Even the three power beaters take a couple of turns to apply as much damage as the Guide and have less surprise factor when drawn late game. Guide is damage right from the get go, is a healthy size, takes no more mana investments and gives you free information while getting his beat on. It is everything you want in a tempo one drop and has a drawback which often isn't one at all.



Delver sneaks in at number two despite having little other support creatures in blue. It is also very weak if you fail to flip it and have to play light creature count anyway to give reasonable odds on flipping it. Flying is so very good in magic and while not as tempo enhancing as haste it has more reach, utility and longevity as the game progresses. On top of this three power is very rare for a one mana investment. Not a consistent card but when you do flip it you have quite an unreasonable edge.

The Nacatl is just a lot of stats for not much mana, the pre requisites are easy to achieve with sac and dual lands. A simple but brutally effective card that is big enough to still be decent as a late draw. Often played in RG or GW decks as it is so easy to splash in the appropriate lands. It is easier to play this effectively than Delver but has fewer decks that it fits in and lacks the flying and so sits just behind it.

Gravecrawler is a fully acceptable 2/1 for one with the added perk of recursion. This makes him good tempo early and offers great synergy and some inevitability too. Not being able to block is relevant in agro on agro games but generally is not relevant to the kinds of deck using it. In black you would happily trade a toughness and the inability to block in order to not lose a life a turn in the really agro decks. You do have to spend extra mana to make him any better than a Savannah Lion but the ball is in your court with that choice and it is not a big cost.

Student of Warfare and Figure of Destiny are very similar cards. Both can apply significant early pressure while offering the ability to turn into very serious late game threats. Both cost more than one mana to get much tempo boost early and consequently are the least effective tempo cards in this list. They make up for this with flexibility and good scaling. In a perfect curve out you are always better off with a one drop that has no extra mana costs however when you don't have a two or three drop you are well covered by your level style guys. Figure can be played in more decks and the instant ability to level is really useful but it is a lot of mana in the mid to late game to make it very threatening which is why Student is ranked higher. A 3/3 with first strike attacking on turn two is going to get a lot of damage through while the 2/2 Figure is likely just going to trade with a utility dork. On top of this Student is  only 8 mana, paid for as you like, to get to the top level which will end games very fast. Games have ended to little more than an unanswered Student by turn 4.

Carrion Feeder is rather more of a utility dork than a pure agro dork but he is only really suitable for agro decks and is very good none the less. He will generally set you back in tempo in the early game if you make him bigger than 1/1 but he helps against disruption and with combat trickery, he steadily grows and he combos really well with the black recursive dorks. Over the course of most usual games he grows reliably as monsters get into combat or are picked off with removal and so he acts a little like the Figure and the Student without requiring any extra mana.

Isamaru is your standard 2/2 for one with no drawback. For big things being legendary is a huge downfall with clone effects and Karakas being a royal pain but one mana critters are not too bothered by such things. Indeed Karakas is often really good for your little Hound of Konda and protects it well. Not an exciting card and offering no other synergy beyond Karakas protection but is reliable and has all the core elements of a one drop tempo beater. The extra toughness over Savannah Lions and Elite Vanguard is nice but not always enough to outweigh the creature type synergy of the latter.


Basking Rootwalla is rarely played in the most balls out agro decks and tends to find himself in quirky agro decks trying to maintain high card advantage instead. Because of the mana requirement to make him a 3/3 you lose tempo rather than gain it by pumping early. He is still fine to have around just nibbling away for one as you often get him for free both to cast and as a card, he is hard to block and is a fine dump for spare mana. He will supplement things like Overrun and has some very nice synergy with cards like Vengevine and Fauna Shaman. Just the other day I lost a game to a 4/5 Rootwalla courtesy of Pendlehaven. A card with a lot of uses that will aid the tempo aspect of various engines.






The final card to make the cut is Steppe Lynx but it was a close call. Unsurprisingly with the very limited scope of a one mana casting cost the various contenders will all be fairly similar. Sarcomancy, Diregraf Ghoul, Elite Vanguard, Champion of the Parish, Stromkirk Noble, Kird Ape and the humble Mogg Fanatic all came very close to the last spot. Below the top 6 there is not a great deal to chose between cards. The Lynx has been putting many games utterly out of reach for recovery in recent incarnations of Zoo and Boros and so qualifies mostly on recent form. You need sac lands to make him good but you only need to draw one or two to have Lynx be brutally effective. No other half decent one drop hits for 4, few do 3 and a bunch of those need further mana to get you there. Hitting with a 2/3 is fine, even if it is only a 0/1 blocker most of the time, it is not like you want him to be blocking in much the same way Gravecrawler and Carrion Feeder are fine. Hitting with a 4/5 is totally not fine when it cost you all of one mana and will get you free wins when you make it on turn one with a few sac lands in hand. The odds on it being a free win are certainly lower than with cards like Sinkhole and Hymn to Tourach but it is still something that will happen enough to justify playing the card. When it is not a bomb it is still fine but is one of the worst late game top decks. Most one drop creatures are weak when drawn late and so the main reason this only just makes the top ten is the high dependence on sac lands for its power levels which are not easy to pick up in drafts.

Counter Burn and it's Evolution

Counter burn has been a viable deck since the dawn of cube. The principle is pretty simple, blue is for counter magic and card draw while red is used in stead of the more common white or black for removal and some added utility. Red burn as removal has some upsides and some downsides, it is very good early and keeps little critters at bay and can be used at the dome to end the game suddenly. This means you have less dead cards when you play any given deck and are able to cope best with the most aggressive decks but you pay for this by being weaker against the big fat monsters that usually require two burns spells to tackle. Pre-Zendikar the deck was a little awkward and was just not quite as reliable as the other various tier one decks of the time. Little things like really wanting a bit of bounce to deal with enchantments and sometimes artifacts. Also wanting some life gain to keep things safe despite frequently self harming with mass removal cards however the options for these things in red and blue are limited and generally require a dedicated spot in the deck. Cryptic Command was a great relief in this regard as it is such a nice cover all spell and means that you can free up the slot of your previously needed bounce card. The early incarnations of the deck had few options for threats, little diversity in mass revmoal and awkward holes to fill. It also lacked planeswalkers which are a huge asset to control decks. The list below is very much what counter burn looked like in Mirrodin block and shows why it was not quite tier one, having to play things like Mystical Tutor and Boomerang are unpleasant, the lack of threats makes actually winning hard and stuff that resolves is a royal pain. The deck was utterly carried by Isochron Scepter as a decent win condition, staller and card advantage engine but this reliance on one card made the deck fragile as well as awkward. Even the mana base was a bit rough...



Old School Counter Burn

23 Spells

Chrome Mox
Zuran Orb

Brainstorm
Lightening Bolt
Force Spike
Mystical Tutor

Boomerang
Counterspell
Memory Lapse
Arcane Denial

Incinerate
Fire / Ice
Isochron Scepter
Pyroclasm

Daze
Magma Jet

Fact or Fiction
Solemn Simulacrum

Force of Will
Prophetic Bolt

Time Spiral
Rorix, Bladewing

Rolling Earthquake

17 Lands

Volcanic Island
Shivan Reef
Faerie Conclave
Flooded Strand
Polluted Delta
6 Mountains
6 Islands













It was really the printing of Inferno Titan that catapulted counter burn back into the limelight rather than the release of Zendikar. Cards had slowly been getting released that would really aid the archetype and while Zendikar offered lots of choice, alternatives and rounded cards to the deck there are no auto include cards in the set. The new incarnation of the deck was styled almost exactly like the old school version but had just vastly increased the quality of the cards in lots of slots. More than anything else the mana base had become highly workable and being able to do things like turn one burn spell into turn two Counterspell became quite likely. As the deck was deep, consistent and powerful enough now to be a tier one deck it was getting a lot of play. People love control and at the time both UW and UB control were under performing. People also love burn and being and to play power cards like Inferno Titan which has relatively few homes given how good it is and so the popularity of the deck swelled further. The list below is a lot like the first tier one counter burn decks to be played in the cube looked like which is basically the Old School version but with all the new juice jammed in for the previous weakest links.


Counter Burn when it asserted itself as a tier 1 deck in Zendikar block

23 Spells

Lightening Bolt
Burst Lightening
Ancestral Visions
Force Spike

Incinerate
Fire / Ice
Isochron Scepter
Memory Lapse

Counterspell
Arcane Denial
Lat-Nam's Legacy
Into the Roil

Sea Gate Oracle
Volcanic Fallout
Time Twister

Solemn Simulacrum
Cryptic Command
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Fact or Fiction

Force of Will
Treachery

Inferno Titan
Rolling Earthquake

17 Lands


Volcanic Island
Steam Vents
Scalding Tarn
Shivan Reef
Cascade Bluffs
Faerie Conclave
4 Mountains
7 Islands
















The popularity and strength of the deck meant that people started to experiment with the build. Red and blue had enough control style creatures to be able to move away from an entrenched reliance on Isochron Scepter and sub par mass removal and play more dorks. This hugely aided the early and mid game tempo of the deck and allowed it to play much more game winning cards. It could worry less about lacking ways to deal with things as it would often be making the most serious threats. These cards also replaced certain effects such as life gain or extreme card draw and thus freed up more space for more threats in the deck. It was this style of deck that was the first to start making Mana Drain really tedious as it so frequently resulted in a turn three game ending 6 drop. With all the card quality from blue having a high curve is not at all a problem and so the deck kept posting the results. One of the great strengths of the deck had always been the ability of the deck to win suddenly and catch the opponent unprepared which is a rarity in a control deck. With all the ridiculous creatures the deck could now play this winning from nowhere was happening unreasonably soon in games.



Intermediate Counter Burn - how it looked a year ish ago after M12 hit


24 Spells

Lightening Bolt
Burst Lightening
Ancestral Visions
Spell Pierce

Remand
Fire / Ice
Arc Trail
Arcane Denial

Counterspell
Lat-Nam's Legacy

Chandra's Phoenix
Vendilion Clique
Manic Vandal
Sea Gate Oracle

Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Chandra, the Fireheart
Cryptic Command

Time Warp
Treachery
Force of Will

Inferno Titan
Wurmcoil Engine
Consecrated Sphinx

Rolling Earthquake

16 Lands


Izzet Boilerworks
Volcanic Island
Steam Vents
Scalding Tarn
Shivan Reef
Cascade Bluffs
Faerie Conclave
3 Mountains
6 Islands












Counter burn had risen to the best control deck and arguably the best archetype in my cube and then they went and released Innistrad block which is probably the single biggest block in terms of contributing power cards to the archetype. Cards like Snapcaster Mage and Bonfire of the Damned which are both utterly abuse and mainstays of the deck. Counter Burn is a perfect home for Snapcaster as it has lots of cheap targets to reuse. The redundancy that Snapcaster gives the deck is also of great value and further lets you free up slots in which to cram more power. Bonfire however is the real game changer, mass removal had become weaker with the introduction of the latest cycle of man lands and the increasing abundance of persist and undying style monsters. Bonfire having the capacity to be used as an instant is able to hit a lot more targets but also offers a great tempo boost over sorcery mass removal even when man lands are not in the equation. Being instant is not the main thing unfair about Bonfire which is of course the fact that it is not symmetrical. This means you are not all that concerned about playing your own dorks, it is also not so obviously broadcast as is the case often enough with symmetrical mass removal effects. Being able to take out planeswalkers with mass removal is also a huge bonus all of which add up to make Bonfire the clear best mass creature removal spell in the cube. This injection of power and flexibility has given counter burn huge freedom on how it will be put together such as this rather fast paced version of the deck below.

Most Recent Counter Burn with all the miraculous joy of Innistrad block

24 Spells

Zuran Orb
Chrome Mox

Delver of Secrets
Lightening Bolt
Burst Lightening
Ancestral Vision

Sensei's Divining Top
Brainstorm

Fire / Ice
Snapcaster Mage
Lat-Nam's Legacy
Counterspell

Remand

Serendib Efreet
Trinket Mage
Illusory Angel

Cryptic Command

Tamiyo, the Moonsage
Force of Will

Inferno Titan
Time Sprial

Temporal Mastery
Rolling Earthquake
Bonfire of the Damned

16 Lands

Izzet Boilerworks
Volcanic Island
Steam Vents
Scalding Tarn
Shivan Reef
Cascade Bluffs
Great Furnace
Faerie Conclave
Desolate Lighthouse
2 Mountains
5 Islands









Or finally (I think we have probably had quite enough of very samey deck lists) this quirkier build which tries to abuse the old school mechanic of locking people out of the game with Forbid being bought back with reusable Squee. Having only one Squee makes the combo rather weaker but the power of the archetype is now able to carry such things. While not unlike the slightly outmoded Isochron Scepter principle it does allow for a great deal of different and fun synergies and is a little less vulnerable to disruption.


The Forbidden Squee version of the deck

24 Spells
Lightening Bolt
Faithless Looting
Enclave Cryptologist
Geistflame

Brainstorm
Noxious Revival

Counterspell
Arcane Denial
Snapcaster Mage
Fire / Ice

Think Twice

Intuition
Squee, Goblin Nabob
Chandra's Phoenix
Forbid

Chandra, the Firebrand
Fact of Fiction
Firewing Phoenix
Cryptic Command

Force of Will
Treachery

Inferno Titan
Bonfire of the Damned
Devil's Play

16 Lands

Izzet Boilerworks
Volcanic Island
Taiga
Tropical Island
Steam Vents
Scalding Tarn
Shivan Reef
Cascade Bluffs
Faerie Conclave
Desolate Lighthouse
3 Mountains
3 Islands







I find the evolution of decks to be both interesting and informative and this is a great example to show. The deck has been around a long time and progressed in a linear way until it hit a critical power level and started to split up into many directions of progression and design. A small core of the deck has remained as constant presence in the deck which is slowly added to. A larger number of cards cycle in and out of the decks depending on what the deck is doing, what other cards are included and so forth and this pool of card grows rapidly as better and better cards are printed. Only a few cards have completely fallen by the wayside never to see play in the deck again. Some early players who were unpleasant necessities we were glad to see the back of have now gone full circle and are starting to look appealing for new reasons. A great example of this is Mystical Tutor which is fantastic with the miracle mechanic. By looking in close detail and a selection of lists for the same deck you are able to gain a good appreciation of how the deck should work and the interactions of the cards within it. Asking questions like why a card appears in most lists but not some will improve your deck buildings skills. Decks require different ratios of groups of cards such as threats or answers or card advantage. Some cards allow these ratios to change, some cards cover multiple groups and so forth. Decks tend to also want a few specific things but understanding those fully requires a good grasp of the meta and when looking over a period of history it obviously changes. The specific cards may be in any group of types of card (with the ratios) and may not be in any at all. Spotting these omissions and their replacements is also something I find informative. It is an exercise in problem solving via deck design and game mechanics.

The Best Combo Deck - Salvagers

I had old magic friends to visit recently who I cubed a lot with around Kamigawa block time. We had done some drafts with lots of local players but wanted some reminiscing style cube and so decided to do a double deck heads up rotisserie with all the power included. There are some decks that need the power to work and the Auriok Salvagers with Black Lotus combo is one of those. The other main one is Fastbond, Crucible of Worlds and Zuran Orb, both produce infinite mana and the Fastbond combo is kind enough to also offer infinite life. The reasons these combos are so good is that they use powerful cards which are great when not being used as part of the combo. I was aiming to get one of these decks as I don't often get to play them and they are amongst the most powerful archetypes in cube. Sadly my Crucible was ganked which meant I could only have the one power combo in my deck. Few decks can get away with cramming double combos in them but in cube where you only have single copies of cards this is more viable, especially when there is significant overlap with the support cards and your combo pieces are useful and powerful stand alone spells. What I ended up with was good and got the job done but wasn't perfect, the mana base was a little dodgy and I failed to pick up a few spells that would have been handy like Living Wish or Regrowth.


25 Spells


Black Lotus
Lions Eye Diamond
Mox Diamond
Mox Emerald

Engineered Explosives

Sensei's Divining Top
Chromatic Star
Pyrite Spellbomb
Vampiric Tutor

Entomb
Reanimate
Thoughtseize
Brainstorm

Sol Ring
Ponder

Demonic Tutor
Time Walk
Oath of Druids
Exhume

Arcane Denial

Frantic Search
Yawgmoth's Will

Auriok Salvagers

Timespiral

Emrakul, the Eons Torn


15 Lands

Tolarian Academy
Forbidden Orchard
Bayou
Tropical Island

Underground Sea
Watery Grave
Scrublands
Tundra

Verdant Catacombs
Polluted Delta
Flooded Strand
Misty Rainforest

Swamp
Sunken Ruins
City of Brass

I also had Balance, Force of Will, Fastbond, Snapcaster Mage, Pernicious Deed, Swords to Plowshares and a selection of other juicy cards however they didn't do much to help with the decks aim or fit into the deck. I agonised over the last few cards end ended up with one targeted discard, one hard counter and a Ponder which was the least exciting card in the whole deck. It was still quite a solid deck, in part through having one more piece of power than I should have had. The basic premise is pretty simple, use Auriok Salvagers to recur Black Lotus or Lions Eye Diamond to generate infinite mana, then use Chromatic Star to draw your whole deck if you don't have an actual win condition or repeatedly throw Pyrite Spellbombs at their face. I considered additional win conditions such as storm cards or X spells with flashback but it is focusing on the wrong weak spot in the deck as you only have one Salvagers. This is one reason Living Wish is so good in the deck, it is also the reason I drafted white weenie as my other deck - to hoover up all the exile removal spells. The deck is still very easy to disrupt and many of the classic anti combo cards ruin your fun from Rule of Law to Trinisphere to Ivory Mask to Pithing Needle not to mention graveyard removal. The thing is you have so much ramp and such an easy combo to assemble that you are better off just going faster and not worrying too much about hate. The engineered Explosives are a great cover all in the deck despite not being the quickest answer and the other late additions help deal with any hate earlier in the game.

Yawgmoth's Will is pretty awful in the deck as you cannot go off in the turn you use it but it works well enough with Time Walk and offers some security like a Regrowth. Assuming they have no ability to exile your cards then with Will, Spiral, the reanimate effects and the reshuffle from Emrakul make it almost impossible to stop the combo by destroying bits of it. Although Salvagers is only 4 mana and the other part of the combo is effectively minus three mana you also need an activation of the Salvagers to get things rolling taking their cost up to 6. This means it is worthwhile to fill up with other ways to get Salvagers into play. Oath  of Druids is a bit slow and unreliable however it does two very useful things, firstly it lets you play a backup win condition in Emrakul who has uses beyond just killing people and their stuff. The second is that it fills up your graveyard, hopefully with the other bits of the combo. This means you can still win on turn 2 after mulliganning down to 3 cards (Mox, Forbidden Orchard and Oath which then mills either a Lions Eye Diamond or a Black Lotus and a Chromatic Star or a Pyrite Spellbomb before hitting the Salvagers.

So Oath works quite well in the deck but I have also filled up on some reanimator cards which might seem over the top, especially with only really having Frantic Search as a discard spell. Generally you have enough mana to simply cast the Salvagers if you do draw them and so it is not a priority to ditch them. The reanimate certainly helps against discard effects and targetted removal (particularly as you can play things like Spellskite due to the poor interaction with Oath) however the real bonus of the Reanimate engine is the use of Entomb which acts reliably as a 3rd tutor spell in the deck for any part of the combo you need. This makes it one mana over Demonic Tutor to get a Black Lotus and go off when you have a Salvagers in play already, if you are getting the Spellbomb mana concerns are not relevant.

As combo decks go it is the lowest overall mana cost to go off (3 total from 4 to cast Salvagers and 2 more to activate once but then 3 less due to the Black Lotus) and although it is a 3 card combo to win it is really more of a 2 card combo as having infinite mana really helps to win games. Salvagers was the first card we ever banned in the cube however when we finally banned the power it seemed fine to bring back. Going off with just Lions Eye Diamond is much harder and riskier. With both Lotus and Lions Eye the deck wins quickly, seemingly from nowhere, it is hard to counter draft and hard to disrupt and not all that much fun to play against. I would recommend against having Salvagers and Black Lotus available in the same drafts but it is worth having your play group experience the deck a few times first from both sides of the table so as to be highly supportive of any restrictions or bannings then made. Suffice it to say the resurgence and triumph of this deck was not warmly received by my guests. Frankly however you go on about how Charbelcher is the best deck and pick it while power is still up for grabs you deserve what you get.