EDH Infect: "A Surprising Win Condition"

EDH Infect: "A surprising Win Condition"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

     The game of Magic has been around for 2 decades now.People who have been playing it for a long time have been maintaining various decks and their concepts over the years. You have your Millers , discarders , Reanimators among them and a certain affinity to certain creature tribes like Goblins , Vampires , Zombies just to name a few. Personally I am a great advocate of the Poison/ Infect Mechanic. The attraction is plain: A players life total is reduced to 10 measly poison damage regardless of any format. Creatures with Infect dish out damage in the form of poison counters that cannot be removed.The goal is to make a Phyrexian out of your opponent after all and to tell them that: "All is one" when you win. It's no surprise that I have tinkered a lot with the mechanic in all the colors available as well as non traditional builds when it was still in standard. Now that it has rotated out I have found that I am carrying my love for this mechanic unto Modern and EDH. Since I have no time to tinker any of my modern decks now that the EDH frenzy has gotten to me I'd like to think about the crazy things infect has done for me in the win category. 

     In the EDH( Elder Dragon Highlander) or Commander format a players life total is 40 life points. With the Infect Mechanic it is now reduced to 10 poison damage. While I have made a dedicated Mono Black EDH deck with Skithiryx as its general , I have found that I have unknowingly put in a splash of my favorite mechanic as an alternate win condition. When you have 11,000 individual card pieces at your disposal you often come up with a lot of combinations that would work to your advantage but I have never forgotten the potency of Infect even if it is just an alternate win condition in some of the 18 EDH decks that I have made. 

     In the recent games that I have played I found it thrilling to win via the infect mechanic (even to be defeated by it from my team mates from Team Virulence) and to once again experience the sense of panic that it invoked during its glory days. EDH players who took their time in developing their boards often met an end they did not expect:

  

- Consider a Godo , Bandit Lord equipped with a Tensa and a Grafted exoskeleton. He becomes an 8/8 trampling infect machine that can untap and attack a second time...

- Consider the Kaldra 9/9 Avatar swooping in for damage  only to be pumped by a lone Tainted strike... 

- Consider a Gruul onslaught of Weenie Creatures (Around 5 or 6)  , An Overrun and Triumph of the Hordes. All those 1/1's become 5/5's with Infect ...

- Consider a Shivan dragon with Phyresis attached to it , swinging and being pumped for 5 for the win...

- Consider a Demon of Hell's gate swinging and being pumped with a tainted strike...

- Consider a consuming Aberration(with a Phyresis attached) that infects you with 100 poison counters...

- Consider a lone bite from an Inkmoth Nexus and then being continually turned into a phyrexian with a Contagion clasp each turn via the proliferate mechanic...

- Consider a Kozilek or an Ulamog taken over by a well-timed Corrupted Conscience swinging in for 12 and 10 Infect damage respectively and with Annihilator too...

     These are some of the plays that I have made and plays that have been done to me in the past weeks and I must say that to Infect someone in an unexpected way is really satisfying. Everyone is just so concerned with the combos that they want to pull off and they expect a certain build like aggro or control that sometimes that a good infect win from a lone creature comes as a shock.

     There would be more plays in the future but in the mean time I'd like to treasure these Infectious plays. There would be more concepts to come and at least for me the Glory of Infect will never die. "All will be one."