"Taking the Black: Mono Black Infect Pauper"

"Taking the Black: Mono Black Infect Pauper"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

I have often mentioned my mono black infect pauper deck but I have never wrote about it. Building it was great but its first outing and my first foray into Standard Pauper was one of my greatest memories.

When my brother Aj told me that Ongkeko's Hobby shop was having a Standard Pauper tournament and with the Scars of Mirrodin and Innistrad joining forces to make a great card pool it was a no brainer for me to join. It would also prove to be a fun night because 4 Team Virulence members would come and join me. So it was Me , Aj , Alicar and Mark Abude against the entire field.

Here is the decklist that I set out to battle with:

20 X Swamps

2 X Toxic Nim

4 X Contagious Nim

4 X Corpse Cur

4 X Flensemite

3 X Plaque Stinger

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17 Creatures

4 X Virulent Wound

4 X Doom Blade

4 X Tragic Slip

4 X Geths Verdict

4 X Distress

3 X Altar's Reap

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23 Spells

A quick look at the spells that I have packed in here would instantly tell you that this is a sort of Mono Black Machine Gun deck. It literally mows down anything that hits the ground. I was thinking that brewers would want to cram as many creautures as much as they could and so I wanted to make sure that I had a bullet for each one of them.

The Distress is there to take care of things I might not be able to deal with on the ground. Doomblade was in common at that time too , as of this writing Doomblade is at the uncommon slot.Scars of Mirrodin and Innistrad has given black many killing spells that I just had to play black.

There were also a lot of Hexproof creatures in the current pool and my brother was play testing heavily against me with it. I realized that I didn't have to be afraid of these creatures even though I may not be able to to target them or have a Geth's Verdict in my hand all the time.

This was an Infect deck and the number to watch out for was 10 not 20. Any player would know the number well otherwise he would find himself frothing at the mouth and turning Phyrexian from all the Poison counters. Hexproof creatures may let early damage in but sooner or later they would have to block to stay alive. Life gainers may gain all the life that they want but they will have watch out for the number 10.

The creatures are few but deadly. Plague Stinger flys in unopposed , Contagious Nim is a cheaper version of the Phyrexian Cruasder and could kill someone after 5 turns. So what happens when my creatures die? They come back for more because of Corpse Cur. Flensermite and Toxic Nim was included mainly because I was able to collect foil versions of them. The 2 Toxic Nims at Ongkeko that same night.

I could feel the helplessness of one of my opponents when I plopped a Toxic Nim into play. A regenerating 4/1 Monstrosity. There were some concedes as they knew that even with blockers I could just wither them all away and eventually Infect. This is a deck that went 4-0. Not bad for someone who just started Standard Pauper. Magic always rekindles your interest just when you thought that there are no other places for you to conquer.It gives you a place when you think that there is no longer any place to go and it makes you find things that you thought were lost to you.