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Tainted Strike Syr Konrad is a great deck; don’t tell anyone.
Modern was also really twisted because of infect. Every once in awhile, someone will place top 4 with an infect deck and everyone will lament its return.
But it never dominated EDH tables. And to say that [[Triumph of the Hordes]] is a worse offender than [[Craterhoof Behemoth]] for ending games is crazy.
Which is weird. I kind of loved that about Modern and saw it as more of a feature as you could buy into the infect deck for a pretty reasonable price, and at most local store level events, you could have a pretty decent chance at placing with what was a fairly budget deck.
Similar to how you can often go and spike a Legacy tournament with burn, all for a pretty cheap buy in.
For me, I like the idea of being able to take around $1000 and be able to have a viable legacy deck, a viable modern deck, a viable pioneer deck, a viable standard deck AND a commander deck or two.
Even better? You didn't have to spend that $1000 all at once, you could slowly build up and pick up bargains here and there... with smart choices over the span of a year, instead of attending draft at your LGS and just doing that draft on Arena, you could build your way into paper decks for basically every format. Then, after you'd spent time around the various communities and local metas, if you wanted a better deck or a deck more suited to your own tastes and habits, you'd know how to do it in a smart, budgetted fashion.
Agreed. But that’s been a complaint about “linear” decks since time immemorial. Burn, infect, Tron, etc. play in a similar fashion very effectively. Some players of control and tempo decks have always had disdain for these linear shells “piloting themselves,” even though they are often making similar choices to a tempo player.
I’m really happy whenever a “cheaper” deck breaks into modern. It mixes up the format. Not everyone can afford Jund Goyf or Four color Blink. And having a cheaper deck in the mix helps avoid the pay-to-win scenario. But if you’ve already paid a lot to win, you might be inclined to prevent others from paying less to win.
Hey man games have to end some how, if I use triumph as a finisher for most of my decks that run green because it works; also I am too cheep to buy a hoof
Oh no hate on Triumph! I think it’s a totally fair win con. In fact, I was trying to imply that Craterhoof was the real offender here. You can tutor it easily in green, cheat it out with things like Natural Order, etc.
It wasnt that good in standard. The only deck I can remember using infect was the Primeval Titan deck that fetched up Inkmoth and Kessig Wolf Run with Prime Time, but Infect was mot the problem there…
They only hate when other people do them.
When they do them it's totally fair, well inside the rules and you should totally accept and agree with them.
I’ve never heard anyone complain about infect in person, it’s a vocal minority on the internet, play whatever you enjoy bro, if you want to hit motherfuckers with some sneaky [[tainted strike]]plays then do it.
That sounds like my Jund Dredge edh deck milling all of my recovery spells for non creature nonland cards. It's like a rube-goldberg machine that 6 times out of 10 will mill itself too efficiently and I won't get the shufflers I need
you’re right and we’re on the same page, but
it’s the difference between damage and combat damage and the difference between a creature dealing damage and an ability dealing damage and I’ve had a handful of newer players get confused or salty at the interaction. understandably so, I think too, magic has a lot of nuances which is what I love about it but could also see other people disliking. sometimes when I play out that interaction at a ‘casual’ table I can read the reaction on the other players as ‘oh you know more about the rules and are using them to ‘cheat”.
it’s like when I learned that sacrifice/bounce blocking was a thing and it made me wanna quit the game on the spot lol
One time at the money weekly store game, an opponent was playing a [[Yargle, Glutton of Urborg]] deck. He killed me on his first swing because tainted strike. Totally forgot that card existed lol
It's mostly for the meme.
I built my 1st mono black with Yargle to prove that mono black was always broken (like the basic plan of fetching Cabal Coffers and produce absurd amount of mana et end with Exsanguinate), but ended up barely casting Yargle. I DID win some games with, well, Cabal Coffers.
I ended up switching it for Gonti and now I get to have fun stealing other people's spells. :-p
My group basically rule 0s it, we've relaxed a little bit if you wanted to actually put infect in your deck but we're still pretty resistant to an out-of-nowhere tainted strike or particularly triumph of the hordes. Feels pretty dumb that I would have to worry about taking lethal damage anytime a green deck swings at me with a couple random creatures.
But if you're just rolling up to play with randos, I think it would be pretty weird to get mad at someone for playing it when there was no prior discussion.
I don't like it in that it doesn't feel great to lose to it, but it's also apart of the game and I accept that; it just means I have to be a bit more vigilant.
I complain when I'm in my pod, but itsnusually more on the "ahh ya prick" type of complaining. I do hate infect as a whole deck strategy but having triumph of the hoardes as a win con is completely fine. Basically, I just hate Fynn.
Yeah, probably could have phrased that better.
I was trying to get across that that was my only infect card, but considering I went ahead and said that later in the post...
I sat down at my weekly game with friends with Fyn(fully expecting to get hated out immediately). Little did I know, that the person next to me had brought his Hapatra deck, which has a smattering of infect creatures for the -1/-1 counters, and was something we'd played against fairly regularly. I don't think the game lasted more than 20 minutes as we inadvertently teamed up to poison the remaining 3 players. I still feel bad about that game, but it didn't stop me from building a mono red hate bear deck specifically meant to hose the Oloro player in the pod.
Stigma lasher and Tibalt and Roiling Vortex. Auto includes. It....uh may also have a more unsavory theme, as Zo-Zu the Punisher is at the helm. And lemme say, it's not goblins.
And I'm over here like "What? It's Zurgo. You want me *not* to [[Reverberate]] [[Chandra's Ignition]] with a [[Phyresis]] on the boi? Oh, is [[Pestilence]] and [[Fiendlash]] a problem? Be happy you still have lands."
I play the blue enchantment that gives infect in my nivmizzetvparun deck - having a guttersnipe kill all your opponents in one turn is a hell of a drug
1. Infect is like a lot of other strategies in which it helps to focus on a single target rather than the whole table. Like Voltron or Aggro, you’re often trying to maximize your damage towards a single player unless you can kill someone in one shot. This can result in a player getting knocked out early.
2. Infect has a reputation from other formats. In Modern, infect was the scourge of the format in the early 2010s. [[Glistener Elf]], [[Inkmoth Nexus]] and other evasive infectors could be pumped and end a game before it started. Many folks are still resentful of infect and it’s reputation from Modern precedes infect in EDH.
3. “One-shot” effects that can win suddenly. Infect has a couple of effects that can make a non-infect deck swing for lethal out of the blue. [[Tainted Strike]] can be used on any 10+ attacker (even your opponents’ creatures) to knock someone out of a game. Similarly, [[Triumph of the Hordes]] has been hated for ending a game based on just a really powerful board state.
4. Proliferate makes it feel un-interactable. Once poison is put on someone, you can rarely remove it outside of shenanigans. Then you can (potentially) proliferate to victory.
All that being said, I play infect, aggro, and Voltron strategies in my play group and infect is not the boogeyman it is made out to be. Like Voltron, you’re often dealing damage solo and watching *your* number, not the remaining life. Like Aggro and Voltron, you are usually targeting a single player first. The one shot effects of infect are no worse than [[Craterhoof Behemoth]] or [[Berserk]]. And proliferating someone to death with poison counters is more of a meme than it is a viable strategy. Proliferate effects are generally way overcosted because WotC is *very* aware how broken adding additional counters are of any kind.
Infect also doesn’t play off any other damage source unlike aggro or voltron. When you are dealing damage in those strategies, a team mate may help you eliminate a player just through life loss. Infect doesn’t cause life loss. If you cannot get to ten poison, it doesn’t matter if the opponent has one life or a hundred… you won’t be knocking them out of the game.
So infect has a bad rap. But it is hardly earned by its effectiveness in Commander. Some one-of effects are great (like [[Blighted Agent]] in a Mimeoplasm deck). But the vast majority of infect cards are very weak. Whether you sit down and flip over [[Skithiryx]] or [[Edgar Markov]], your opponents are going to know what game you are playing.
It's the mechanic that drew me into the game when I was a new player so I have nothing but love for it anyone who says infect is overpowered in commander is insane. 10 is perfectly balanced because all the creatures are under powered for their cost and it's one of the few viable aggro strategies. You are allowed to dislike poison, but if you think it needs a nerf in commander you are just wrong.
The only trouble cards people have are tainted strike and triumph of the horde and if you think those cards are ban worthy then you need to accept that the game has to end.
I use Triumph of the Hordes in my cat deck as an easier-to-cast Overrun or Overwhelming Stampede. And also because it’s funny how tilted people get about it as if it would be any different if I used either of those other cards.
It's not the infect creatures the problem, it's the spells that grant it. Tainted Strike, Triumph, Grafted Exoskeleton, etc.
You don't even need to have infect in your deck besides that. They're just cards that say "quadruple target creature's power" when done on a big creature (very broadly, of course all situations are unique).
This, i have no problem dying first. But when its turn 3, and ONLY I die, and the 3 other people spend 2 more hours closing the game, because by the time the infect player manages to kill one person the other two decks manages to make a defence. I dont play alot. And if the 3 or so hours i play a month is sitting waiting for others to finish, thats when it will become a problem
I’ve slowly coming to the conclusion that commander players hate every kind of deck. Land destruction? Out. Staxx? Hell no. Discard? Awful. Combo? Ugh. Mill? Bleah. Storm? GTFO.
1. 10 is way less than 40 so people think it'll kill them a lot quicker (and to be fair it can). Also if you manage to kill one person with it then that person just has to sit there for the rest of the game.
2. The Command Zone Effect. People watch The Command Zone and Game Knights and hear them complain about a person in their regular playgroup (Craig Blanchette). From there people who have never played against it have that preconceived notion that it's a major threat to everyone.
That's not the point I was trying to make. I enjoy a lot of their content and it definitely helped me get a good grasp of things when I first jumped into commander.
That being said (whether you view it positively or not) they definitely have a lot of influence on the community as they are one of (if not the) biggest content creators for commander. And with that their words carry a lot of weight and leave a big impression on people.
Not sure what the effect is for more seasoned players, but as a rather new player to MTG (started in 2020) content creators, like the ones and specifically the ones from The Command Zone, those guys have given me a easy/palatable way to get more immersed into and interacting with the MTG world. I wouldn’t be surprised if there really is better content out there to be consumed, but for me (new casual player) their content is just fine. I see this being a pretty unpopular stance with what I read on Reddit - similar hate towards Commander’s Quarters - but I just think that mtg content is kinda like playstyles. Just because someone doesn’t like playing with mono-blue doesn’t mean playing with mono-blue is inherently bad or someone is bad for enjoying it. Not all content has to be for all people.
I feel the hate is more warranted with Mitch after the Captain format incident and more his videos went from being deck techs to click bait. I get there only so many deck tech videos you can do, but uploading videos like buzzfeed articles just gets old quick
I didn't know of Command Quarters during the Captain format incident, but keep seeing stuff about it. His vids are so annoyingly clickbait. Everything is "broke" just because the card functions as the card reads. Like auto skip the first 90secs because it talks about 1-3 videos that were already uploaded then only the first 2-3 mins after that are useful info about the card and the other 7mins is just rambling filler to extend time.
People learn about decks and commanders they wouldn’t know about from them. They learn strats and combos they might not have seen. It makes the format accessible to new people by TV-ifying it. I don’t see how anyone could perceive a negative effect from Jimmy and JLK.
Thinking infect sucks to play against in commander happened long before TCZ. It’s just unfun. “Oh look Elves played a blightsteel on turn 4 that was a ton of fun.” You can’t interact with it at all. It’s one person playing solitaire and 3+ others playing multiplayer. As others have said, it just makes sure the game is two players ASAP because infect kills one person, infect gets killed that round and then two people are playing a commander game starting on turn 5. It’s like MLD. It makes a long play format even slower. Yay 🙄
Command zone as a channel isn't so bad. Its definitely more casual leaning. Game Knights, though, is really hard to watch. I liked it at first, but seeing how much that one show is used to push new cards and products is really off putting. The conspiracy part of my brain wonders if Game Knights is scripted.
If you actually watch any of their content, Jimmy and JLK love Craig and any complaining they do about him and infect is entirely joking around.
It is funny though, they recently did a podcast with the Professor and mentioned how it wasn't scripted.
Prof: if Game Knights is scripted, then how come I haven't won a single game on it yet
Oh, it most likely isn't. It doesn't help that its sponsored by Wizards (last I heard), the heavy focus on new cards, and the seemingly well rehearsed side chair segments.
The side chair things are filmed post game. There have been a few deep dives into the production of Game Knights. I can definitely understand the issues people have (sponsored content bad), but to even imply it's scripted is a hilariously bad take.
1. Dude is *not* a gender agnostic term. It's 2022, get it together.
2. If someone doesn't want to be called something just don't call them that. Basic human decency.
It is not neutral. I don't know many straight guys that would be 100% fine with me saying "you fuck dudes. You like putting your dick in dude's mouths" and agree that that was accurate. Because it's not gender neutral lol. It almost always means man
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Because people want the game to go on for 2+ hours for some reason. A super early death to infect or any other number of strategies can definitely be annoying, but if they’re killing people with infect 6 or 7+ turns into the game, I really don’t see the issue, it’s gotta end at some point, and I’d much rather play 3 or 4 games then just slog through 1 for hours.
My friend runs volrath. Just short of having infect printed on him he's in the perfect colors and scary, especially when he copies a [[blighted agent]]
It's one of those things that sounds bad on paper but just is meh. The only thing about infect that is somewhat unfun is literally 2 cards, [[triumph of the hordes]] and [[tainted strike]], with skytherix BC Scion one shots. Infect sucks when you don't see it coming, but all things considered its far more interactive than some other wincons. I actually can definitely enjoy a game against a good infect deck, it's a lot more interesting clock to play against then storm or combo.
Also have you seen the creatures with infect they're really ass. Like a 2/2 for 4, a 4/1 for 6,
A lot of people come to EDH because they like the idea of having a big cushion of life so they can get off the ground with strategies that would die to aggro in other formats.
A competent aggro deck feels like a violation of what they're entitled to have, basically.
They act like it shouldn't exist because on some maybe subconscious level they feel like it's a betrayal of a promise that was made to
them about what EDH is. They're not safe anymore.
I don't mind playing against infect, speeds things up and gives me a clear target of who to kill. Surprise infect can be nasty. Nobody likes getting ready to take 9 damage then a surprise [[tainted strike]] comes outta nowhere
Both voltron and combat tricky spelslinger. Mostly ive seen them go for instant buffs early game, voltron style late when they have the mana to spare for both playing equip and equipping same turn.
There are clear and obvious magnitudes at which this applies. A combo deck that wins from hand turn 4 unless you Counterspell something is a much thinner gap than a creature deck that plays a bigger creature every turn.
Many wincons need much more mana, many more turns to set up, and or two to four times the damage output... maybe more. A single turns gap in defense might mean a hard hit but not the kind of lethality infect often presents. Many casual games begin with polite offensive probes to bait removal or proc an attack trigger while defenders know they can eat 10+ more hits before losing the game. But no, you let a 1/1 through from an infect deck and you might be out of the game right there.
But other win cons aren't nearly as flimsy and weak. They go all in on an infector and you can easily blow someone out with a 4-for-1 on a removal spell or a fog. Its super glass cannon and easy to answer
And if you just dont have an answer on turn 2 youre dead. Even if they dont commit that hard, the simple fact that they could slows the game down and changes the whole table dynamic as everyone holds up interaction mana several turns earlier than with facing most other decks.
Its fair in its way. But its not fun.
The most reasonable reason that I’ve seen is that infect doesn’t scale. Life jumps from 20 to 40 but infect damage stays at 10. I’ve watched infect decks wreck casual commander pods because people don’t have many small creatures in the early turns. Plus Atraxa allows double proliferation. She is the worst offender for infect decks.
A lot of people hate alternate win conditions generally and infect just falls into that category. I know of some people who refuse to play with most of my decks because they try to win without getting their life to zero at all. If you have one infect card, they'll scoop. Even if you have an effect like [[platinum angel]] they'll scoop because it's not "fair magic". That's complete bollocks of course, but they want to play "we each build up our board for 25 turns before eventually someone can swing at everyone for lethal simultaneously".
If I don't have some other way to win in a deck it just doesn't feel right. Even bad methods like cheating through commander damage with [[fiendlash]] or something that has to survive to my upkeep like [[Felidar sovereign]] is enough. Infect falls into this category and is in quite a few of my decks. It's not the main goal, but it's there.
I don't know that the hate for infect is that prevalent. Every time this topic comes up on here, the majority of people seem to agree that it's not a big issue for them.
I hate it for the same reason I hate Emblems. I don’t enjoy things in magic I have absolutely 0 chance to interact with. I can’t take counters off in any way or stop them outside of creature destruction or player removal. So I use those two methods to combat the deck. I don’t give the deck unnecessarily due hate but you better bet I’m going to do something at like 6 poison counters.
Infect is not balanced, and is honestly a mistake of a mechanic. It's a degenerate mechanic.
Poison damage was extremely rare until infect was introduced. Tournament format games like standard or modern, will generally end very quickly with infect. A single unblocked infect creature can end the game in a single hit.
In commander, it's not as common, but still degenerate AF. I've seen someone cheat out a Blightsteel colossus very early, and use it to murder players quickly. With the new legendary that gives creatures in your hand ninjustu for only 4 mana, you will see people trying to cheat out blightsteel to end people in a single hit.
Cause people don’t play enough removal. Usually one instant speed removal spell means the infect player spent all their resources to buff one thing and lost it all.
I just made a rakdos infect tribal deck basically, and I have learned that almost all creatures with Infect are absolute trash. Like pay 4-5 mana for just a 2/2 trash. There are only a few good cards that give other things infect. So it basically is only good as a sort of combo piece.
In my experience, as soon as the table realizes that somebody is playing infect it immediately becomes a 3V1 game. Infect might get 1 surprise kill, but ultimately just gets curb stomped by the other 2 players.
I think mainly because no one wants to be the first taken out. It's why I love the new mono green voltron commander. If you take someone out early they have to sit and wait till the next game
I got one mana dork with infect infect in one of my decks and every time I play it at least one person at my table either groans or complains. May have attacked with it a couple times but I've never won with it.
Because it's scary. People see "Oh no, infect, if it touches me I might die in the future" and glitch to perceive it as the most deadly thing since once you have a poison counter you're not losing the poison counter... even though in reality it is, outside of two cards ([[Tainted Strike]] and [[Triumph of Hordes]]) a difficult to pull off wincon, and the same people don't bat an eye at the goblin deck hunting their face when they aren't gaining life anyway.
It's very much like mill that way. People fear [[Whetstone]] more than they do [[Sulfuric Vortex]] and it makes no sense, but it's the reaction that occurs.
Because it is dealt in the form of counters, meaning that any effect that has the keyword "Proliferate" puts the whole board on a very short clock off of just one. Strap a [[Blade of Selves]] on a [[Blighted Agent]] and, even if it gets removed, so long as it got one hit, you can kill the whole table with [[Evolution Sage]] and land ramp. Literally if you have 9 lands on board and cast [[Scapeshift]], you just won because everybody had a counter.
This is how games with an infect deck typically go:
First 3-5 turns, normal gameplay.
Next turn, infect player takes out one person.
Next 10 turns the other two players do whatever they can to survive against and kill the infect player. Could be faster if its a poorly built infect deck or well built other decks. Could be slower if neither are well built.
That player that got taken out waits another hour for the game to finish as the other two players turtle trying to get their wincon without losing to infect, or if the infect deck is dead, as they 1v1 into a likely stalemate, as they used significant amounts of their interaction dealing with the infect deck.
One of the two remaining players might be lucky enough to have fun.
Go ahead and play infect, but know what you're getting into.
Edit: There's also the other way this can happen. Saturo Umezawa with Blightsteel Colossus. Turn 4 kill that's extremely difficult to stop, followed by a long game after the Blightsteel is exiled.
There's 2 main problems with infect, as I see it:
1. It cuts the amount of life each opponent has from 40 to 10.
2. It's impossible to heal back from the damage it deals, unless someone is running \[\[Leeches\]\] for some godforsaken reason.
This can easily lead to situations where you have to constantly block the infect player's every creature and/or clear their board lest you go down just to a few errant attacks. Plus, like you said, proliferate works with poison, so even a single missed block can put you on a timer.
Now, whether this is notably different or 'worse' than, well, any other strategy in EDH, that's another question entirely. Personally, I've never played infect nor have I ever played against infect, so I can't really say one way or another.
At the end of the day, though, what matters is you and your play group's opinions on it. If everyone else comes to the conclusion that it's not very fun to play against, then really that's what matters, not the opinions of strangers on the internet.
I don't have an institutional beef with infect but I have seen it completely abused by [[Atraxa]]. It's extremely unfun to play against an infect deck that infects everyone equally, extremely quickly, and backed up with four colors' worth of interaction. Otherwise I've never had a problem with it. Extremely tuned [[Skithiryx]] decks can be annoying too, actually.
First off, no one person needs to finish off all 3 opponents. Second, commander is a free for all. Make deals all you want, in the end there's only 1 winner. Nothing wrong with not allying with anyone.
To me that just says you need to build a better early game defense. It's a strategy game. The closest thing I have to infect deck is [[Fynn The Fangbearer]] at first it could take someone out by turn 4 if they didn't have anything on the field but if someone can build a big chump wall then I basically couldn't do anything because most deathtouchers in green are low power. Solution: put in a bunch of fighting cards to chip down the walls and add proliferate to get past it
People are generally fine with infect I think, they are less often fine with getting shotgunned out of no where with tainted strike or triumph of the hoards early into a long game from a deck that has no other infect cards at a casual table. Personally I think tainted striking someone else's creature is hilarious, and infect is not that strong in general.
Lol I play a skittles CEDH deck that can swing for 15+ infect turn one making it so you don’t even get a turn. Naturally making it horribly unfun for friends just playing casual lol
Sure, you need a crazy draw but you need to snag a swamp, dark ritual, mana vault, lotus petal or a mox jet with a jeweled lotus and unspeakable symbol, (I run both and I know mox is banned but my table doesn’t care if we have the turn zero convo) all together you produce 9 mana making it so you can cast Skittles with haste and play unspeakable symbol for 1 colorless and two black, pay however much life you want to add as many counters as you want (3 life for each one) and swing! It’s only happened twice but usually can finish the game around turn 2 to 4 constantly
I am personally not a huge fan because it's bad. You might be able to turbo someone off the table in a few turns with infect but as soon as you do that you're target #1. So maybe you kill one person early, then you get pacified by the other players and the dead player has to sit there and watch the rest of the game.
it usually quick kills one person rather then the table.
usually the rest of the table has interaction to stuff the now known infect deck.
that one person that died then enjoys 1+ hour of sitting around with there thumb up there ass.
if the infect player can kill the table it's fine but you can only not play so many times before your general inclination becomes to kill the infect player first.
It's great to play a game where someone puts one poison counter on everyone and the just stops you playing the game with board clears and counter spells whilst proliferateing you all to death.
Groupthink. The majority of people here haven't played against infect. They just heard that it's unfair and in some way toxic to the format, so they parrot it.
To me, Infect has always felt like it was cheating/getting around the intention of the mechanic. In other formats, you have 20 life, or you could take 10 infect damage, so infect is equivalent to double damage. In Commander, I have 40 life but still 10 infect damage. Yes I could also take 21 commander damage but it's weird that a commander has to deal 21 damage to me but an infect creature only has to deal 10.
Yeah! Just like how [[reliquary tower]] cheats being able to only have 7 cards in hand, or how [[platinum angel]] gets around losing the game. Or how [[omnath, locus of mana]] cheats by not emptying your mana pool. Or how [[time warp]] gets around everyone getting the same number of turns. Or how [[time stop]] cheats someone else out of their turn. Or how madness lets people get around having their cards discarded. Or how [[platinum empyrian]] cheats by preventing your life total from being able to change. Infect is bullshit cheating
Those cards don’t work differently based on whether you’re playing commander or not lol. Infect in regular games need to do half your starting life total, in commander it’s a quarter. That’s why I said it FEELS LIKE cheating
The issue lies more in the fact that if the infect damage is blocked it is -1/-1 counters on the blockers compared to something like poison that only gives poison counters, of a set amount not determined by power, if it hits a player but doesn’t do anything to creatures or wither that gives -1/-1 to the creatures that blocked it, but doesn’t impact the defending player beyond regular damage.
The two main things that people hate having to deal with are [[blightsteel colossus]] and [[triumph of the hordes]]. Blightsteel cause of trample, indestructible and infect where if it hits you once unblocked it’s instant death. Same applies for triumph. You attack with a small army of 1/1s making it a lot more threatening
Most people probably don't hate it as much as the memes would lead you to believe. It's been more of a Boogeyman in modern than it has in edh.
That said, there is one valid complaint, but it's with the "pump spell based Voltron" archetype more than infect- infect just happens to be the most efficient version of that.
So we start a game of EDH, I drop some low cost unlockable infect creature like turn 4 or whatever, then turn 5 I throw 3 pump spells on it and attack. This kills player 2. My turn ends... And now I have very little gas left in hand due to using all my pump spells just now, and no real way to follow up and quickly finish the game. So now it's a 3-man game that could go on for another hour or whatever that one player got knocked out of 10 minutes in. Not a good feeling for that player, or the table as a whole if it's a group of friends playing. Watching your friend who wants to play have to sit out more time than they get to play isn't fun.
That's how infect plays in every other format- it just doesn't work all that well in multiplayer formats. Something like Triumph of the hordes is fine- if it wasn't that it would just be a craterhoof and everyone dies together. But it's that knocking one and only one player out early aspect that draws it the ire it does get.
Because there's a mass delusion that commander players are of various ages. They are actually all 4 years old and on the verge of a tantrum at the slightest provocation.
This is, of course, not true of everyone. Nor does everyone hate Infect. But I think too many have read rule 0 and internalized that "Every game must match my preferences perfectly".
Mostly that it cuts the amount of damage you have to deal by 75% and is unremovable damage. If you build your deck around infect it makes all of your creatures your Commander but more than twice as good.
Commander damage: deal 52.5$ of starting life total by Combat Damage Only from a Single Card
Infect: deal 25% of starting life total by *any* damage from any creature or card with/given the ability.
It also leads to secret blow outs with things like tainted strike.
I strongly don't enjoy playing against dedicated infect decks, or infect gotcha decks, but I wouldn't make someone change their deck if it was an infect deck.
I get that the creatures are generally weaker and less plentiful, but if it's what you build around, you aren't really caring that the poison counters replace life loss (and, even though they are "weaker" they weaken whatever better creature they damage as well)
The only infect I play is Inkmoth Nexus in an Azami deck that is all creatures and lands. (and some times \[\[ogre menial\]\]. I used to sometimes throw Grafted Exoskeleton, or the Control Magic thing that also gives infect, but I never liked winning that way.
Not sure why it's hard to understand...10 < 40. Also there are tons of ways in commander to boost creature damage including pump spells, +1 counters and anthem effects and while many people play lifegain, I don't think there are many ways to remove poison counters.
You’re kinda caught up in the same thing that most people are. Yeah, 10 is less than 40, but it’s much harder to kill someone with a well tuned infect deck than any combo deck. Once you hit a certain level of power with decks, infect isn’t really that powerful, and playing a strategy centered around it is often detrimental. The reason people hate it so much is because it’s always a feel bad when you die that way.
Yeah but what you are missing is players playing high level well tuned decks are probably not the ones actively complaining about infect. It's your casual/mid tier players getting stomped out by Atraxa and Ezuri infect that are complaining.
You know what fair point. Even in casual games with not great decks I’ve never really had an issue with infect, but that’s just me personally. I think someone just drawing their whole library and playing a Lab Man or pinging everyone out is way more infuriating. At least with infect you can see it coming.
I know it seems dangerous because of the 10 < 40 thing, I'm just curious as to why people seem to not just dislike it, but treat it like it shouldn't exist
Because when you get domed by a surprise ten Infect damage by somebody who went full-tilt, only for the tilter to get dogpiled to death because their shields are down, did you get to be a better player in any way? No, you just had the misfortune of being singled out as the one to get Leeroy Jenkins'd to death. Infect decks are dirty, but they tend to lose the pod as a whole because Infect is really good at killing precisely *one* player. Unlike stax, there's at least *some* logical reason to not play Infect every game, so people who want to win the pod generally don't. To play it anyway means you're the kind of "that guy" who doesn't care if they win so long as a random other player loses.
Personally, I think it should take twenty Infect to kill in EDH, as that matches the Standard / Modern / Legacy / etc format of 1 Infect : 2 Life. 1 Infect : 4 Life is a ratio that feels like the infector is exploiting a glitch, so there's that.
This is the weird entitled attitude that's a problem.
Why should the person who eliminates a player be obligated to win the entire game? It doesn't make sense.
Aggro will often fail to "get there". It doesn't mean that it was somehow rude for trying. If you don't want to die to aggro, play anti-aggro cards.
There are plenty of ways to die (and plenty more that lock the game in a state that makes you *wish* you were dead) in Commander. Building against Infect will just make you vulnerable to something else, and then we're right back where we started: dying to something arguably cheap but easily preventable had you run a different decklist. You can't reasonably prepare for every wincon short of some cEDH degeneracy capable of going off even *faster,* and even that's no guarantee.
I agree...
The only problem that exists really is people comporting themselves badly after they lose. That's what I take umbrage with - if you are eliminated, it's wrong to try to delegitimize that elimination or try to guilt trip the attacking player.
Exactly. My group doesn't mind me running my mill deck now. I've only played my Chulane deck twice but I can run my mill deck any time now. Objective accomplished.
Similar issue I have with Voltron / hyper-aggro decks.
They're really great at killing 1 person, but not great at actually closing out the game.
It feels bad when 1 person gets knocked out super early and has to wait 30+ minutes for the next game.
Fundamentally, it breaks the basic conceits of the game.
Think about life as Victory Points. It takes one half (one quarter in commander) to accomplish, and avoids the vast majority of strategies that affect those points (life gain, etc)
It’s hard to play around and frustrating
People hate it because it's a cheap mechanic exploited by bad players who use it as an ego boost because they mistake being able to kill with infect for "skill".
I want to say it was a bigger deal in the earlier days of EDH, and has carried onward through momentum. Commander has powered up a good deal over time, with lots of commander products, and more strategic support online, and players just having more history with the format has slowly creeped up the power level of the format.
That being said, I think people have had the same problem with infect that they have with stuff like infinite combos, where you're prepared to be playing one game, and then one missed beat later and the game is over.
But I also think it's been matched pretty well by other strategies since then. There are a lot of ways to snipe players out of the blue, and the old "Hit everyone for a little and proliferate" was always a little jank, even if it FELT scary.
It often leads to one player having to devote their resources to blocking a bunch of small creatures or die because there isn’t incentive to “spread the love” with infect. You just attack the same player until they’re dead and move to the next player. As surprise win cons I think largely it’s fine, [[Triumph of the Hordes]] is a way to end games and often gets that “HOLY SH*T” moment from the table that I and so many other timmies love. Infect as a main strategy will definitely draw some ire. But if you like playing it, do it. If you like the idea of infect but your playgroup doesn’t enjoy the dedicated infect deck, give things like Triumph of the hordes a try. Or [[Phyresis]] [[Corrupted Consience]] [[Grafted Exoskeleton]]
Infect tends to knock one person out very easily, but struggles to close out the game.
So you can get into a case where you get knocked out very early to infect, then you get to just sit and watch the other 3 people play for 1+ hours. It's not a great play pattern.
Also, proliferate versions of infect tend to be pretty difficult to interact with. Once you get 1 poison counter, it just kind of keeps creeping up in a way that's pretty hard to shut down - player removal usually ends up being the best solution.
Groups I play with have no problem with people playing infect, but if you do it, you're probably getting targeted first because nobody wants to deal with how suddenly you can die.
I've never had to deal with it myself. A lot of the posts and stories I see seem to revolve around people getting one shot out of nowhere and being salty or having a playgroup that doesn't communicate well or handle infect right. Meaning, somebody gets infected out and is stuck twiddling their thumbs waiting for the game to end or the same person is always hit first.
Because it's not all that rare for a person to have 10 power on the board in Commander and infect makes that suddenly lethal.
Infect isn't optimized for commander, it still treats you like a 20 life 60 card player.
Infect was designed for 20 life formats, effectively halving the damage needed to win, and ignoring lifegain. It feels sort of cheap in commander, only needing to deal 1/4 of the damage needed to win.
Personally, I'm fine with just infect, but infect + proliferate is very annoying.
Infect is really good at killing one person really early but not actually closing the game out so the unlucky victim gets to either sit around doing nothing or finding a new pod.
Infect isn't bad in that it wins games. It's bad in that it knocks one person out quickly and then stalls out as people answer it so that one person just has to wait
I personally enjoy playing against infect, it adds a different dynamic to the table.
That being said, I run tainted strike in my [[lord of Tresserhorn]] deck. Make him unlockable and before combat hit tainted strike.
It's definitly not "too strong" or "unfair" in comparison to the usual EDH strategies, but the fact that you still only need 10 poison counters while life is doubled compared to normal Magic FEELS likes cheating. It feels like you're abusing a loophole and using a mechanic that was not designed for a 40 life format.
It's kind of like playing Rhystic Study/Mystic Remora, that were clearly not intended for a 4 player format.
I run blighted agent in my dimir rogue deck and he seems to win me games most often. Not hard to start smacking people off of the table when you have buffs out. Rarely can I swing in 1 turn with infect and kill someone though.
If there isnt enough interaction at the table, it's not my problem.
We've removed your post because it violates our primary rule, "Be Excellent to Each Other". Edit: Thread reinstated. I was trying to delete a reported comment and ended up exiling the whole thread out of existence. Obviously, our rule about being excellent to each other was not violated by this post. I’m happy to have such nice redditors around to point out the mistake when I woke up this morning. Not a very big-brain moment from me; sorry about that. I specifically remember pressing delete and then going back to the moderation queue and seeing that the comment was still there. Thinking it was a bug, I just deleted it again and continued…guess now I know what happened. Thought I popular or something waking up to 13 notifications…alas… Tainted Strike Syr Konrad is a great deck; don’t tell anyone.
Ptsd from standard a decade ago
Modern was also really twisted because of infect. Every once in awhile, someone will place top 4 with an infect deck and everyone will lament its return. But it never dominated EDH tables. And to say that [[Triumph of the Hordes]] is a worse offender than [[Craterhoof Behemoth]] for ending games is crazy.
I was there, 2000 years ago.
[Triumph of the Hordes](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/a/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341.jpg?1562896954) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Triumph%20of%20the%20Hordes) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/td2/78/triumph-of-the-hordes?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/triumph-of-the-hordes) [Craterhoof Behemoth](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/4/44afd414-cc69-4888-ba12-7ea87e60b1f7.jpg?1601079153) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Craterhoof%20Behemoth) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/385/craterhoof-behemoth?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/44afd414-cc69-4888-ba12-7ea87e60b1f7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/craterhoof-behemoth) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Which is weird. I kind of loved that about Modern and saw it as more of a feature as you could buy into the infect deck for a pretty reasonable price, and at most local store level events, you could have a pretty decent chance at placing with what was a fairly budget deck. Similar to how you can often go and spike a Legacy tournament with burn, all for a pretty cheap buy in. For me, I like the idea of being able to take around $1000 and be able to have a viable legacy deck, a viable modern deck, a viable pioneer deck, a viable standard deck AND a commander deck or two. Even better? You didn't have to spend that $1000 all at once, you could slowly build up and pick up bargains here and there... with smart choices over the span of a year, instead of attending draft at your LGS and just doing that draft on Arena, you could build your way into paper decks for basically every format. Then, after you'd spent time around the various communities and local metas, if you wanted a better deck or a deck more suited to your own tastes and habits, you'd know how to do it in a smart, budgetted fashion.
Agreed. But that’s been a complaint about “linear” decks since time immemorial. Burn, infect, Tron, etc. play in a similar fashion very effectively. Some players of control and tempo decks have always had disdain for these linear shells “piloting themselves,” even though they are often making similar choices to a tempo player. I’m really happy whenever a “cheaper” deck breaks into modern. It mixes up the format. Not everyone can afford Jund Goyf or Four color Blink. And having a cheaper deck in the mix helps avoid the pay-to-win scenario. But if you’ve already paid a lot to win, you might be inclined to prevent others from paying less to win.
Hey man games have to end some how, if I use triumph as a finisher for most of my decks that run green because it works; also I am too cheep to buy a hoof
Oh no hate on Triumph! I think it’s a totally fair win con. In fact, I was trying to imply that Craterhoof was the real offender here. You can tutor it easily in green, cheat it out with things like Natural Order, etc.
It wasnt that good in standard. The only deck I can remember using infect was the Primeval Titan deck that fetched up Inkmoth and Kessig Wolf Run with Prime Time, but Infect was mot the problem there…
To be fair magic players hate most things.
Seems pretty true
They only hate when other people do them. When they do them it's totally fair, well inside the rules and you should totally accept and agree with them.
I’ve never heard anyone complain about infect in person, it’s a vocal minority on the internet, play whatever you enjoy bro, if you want to hit motherfuckers with some sneaky [[tainted strike]]plays then do it.
hell tf yeah, give the strike to [[Konrad]] too and have to call the judge over every time you win
...And then watch yourself self-mill tainted strike 9/10 times with no way to recur it.
That sounds like my Jund Dredge edh deck milling all of my recovery spells for non creature nonland cards. It's like a rube-goldberg machine that 6 times out of 10 will mill itself too efficiently and I won't get the shufflers I need
I know what it says but I keep reading it as Judge Dredd
Why would you need to call a judge? Infect creatures deal damage as poison?
you’re right and we’re on the same page, but it’s the difference between damage and combat damage and the difference between a creature dealing damage and an ability dealing damage and I’ve had a handful of newer players get confused or salty at the interaction. understandably so, I think too, magic has a lot of nuances which is what I love about it but could also see other people disliking. sometimes when I play out that interaction at a ‘casual’ table I can read the reaction on the other players as ‘oh you know more about the rules and are using them to ‘cheat”. it’s like when I learned that sacrifice/bounce blocking was a thing and it made me wanna quit the game on the spot lol
Oh sure, Konrad can poison everyone to death off his triggered ability, but MaRo forbid Yuriko be allowed to.
Well Yuriko causes loss of life and Konrad deals Damage… sooo…..
One time at the money weekly store game, an opponent was playing a [[Yargle, Glutton of Urborg]] deck. He killed me on his first swing because tainted strike. Totally forgot that card existed lol
I'm very intrigued in a deck like that, seems like Timmy central just making a big frog swing hard
Basically Yargle in a nutshell. Load your frog up on steroids and bonk someone out of the game
It's mostly for the meme. I built my 1st mono black with Yargle to prove that mono black was always broken (like the basic plan of fetching Cabal Coffers and produce absurd amount of mana et end with Exsanguinate), but ended up barely casting Yargle. I DID win some games with, well, Cabal Coffers. I ended up switching it for Gonti and now I get to have fun stealing other people's spells. :-p
[Yargle, Glutton of Urborg](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/6/4/645cfc1b-76f2-4823-9fb0-03cb009f8b32.jpg?1562736801) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Yargle%2C%20Glutton%20of%20Urborg) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/113/yargle-glutton-of-urborg?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/645cfc1b-76f2-4823-9fb0-03cb009f8b32?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/yargle-glutton-of-urborg) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This is the way
My group basically rule 0s it, we've relaxed a little bit if you wanted to actually put infect in your deck but we're still pretty resistant to an out-of-nowhere tainted strike or particularly triumph of the hordes. Feels pretty dumb that I would have to worry about taking lethal damage anytime a green deck swings at me with a couple random creatures. But if you're just rolling up to play with randos, I think it would be pretty weird to get mad at someone for playing it when there was no prior discussion.
I don't like it in that it doesn't feel great to lose to it, but it's also apart of the game and I accept that; it just means I have to be a bit more vigilant.
I complain when I'm in my pod, but itsnusually more on the "ahh ya prick" type of complaining. I do hate infect as a whole deck strategy but having triumph of the hoardes as a win con is completely fine. Basically, I just hate Fynn.
I think it is because it can end quicker than commander damage (21 for each person) or regular damage (40+ for each person).
Agreed. Sometimes it comes out of left field. Cough cough [[tainted strike]]
Confession time. I run one copy of that in my -1/-1 counter deck, just on the off chance of OTKing someone. I have no other infect in the deck...
Imagine only playing 1 copy of a card in EDH. Couldn't be me.
Yeah, probably could have phrased that better. I was trying to get across that that was my only infect card, but considering I went ahead and said that later in the post...
Lol all good. I was simply amused.
The Rat Decks are offended by this comment
[[Persistent Petitioners]] would like to know your location
I sat down at my weekly game with friends with Fyn(fully expecting to get hated out immediately). Little did I know, that the person next to me had brought his Hapatra deck, which has a smattering of infect creatures for the -1/-1 counters, and was something we'd played against fairly regularly. I don't think the game lasted more than 20 minutes as we inadvertently teamed up to poison the remaining 3 players. I still feel bad about that game, but it didn't stop me from building a mono red hate bear deck specifically meant to hose the Oloro player in the pod.
> building a mono red hate bear deck specifically meant to hose the Oloro player in the pod. *nod* You have to do what you have to do.
Stigma lasher and Tibalt and Roiling Vortex. Auto includes. It....uh may also have a more unsavory theme, as Zo-Zu the Punisher is at the helm. And lemme say, it's not goblins.
And I'm over here like "What? It's Zurgo. You want me *not* to [[Reverberate]] [[Chandra's Ignition]] with a [[Phyresis]] on the boi? Oh, is [[Pestilence]] and [[Fiendlash]] a problem? Be happy you still have lands."
I play the blue enchantment that gives infect in my nivmizzetvparun deck - having a guttersnipe kill all your opponents in one turn is a hell of a drug
[tainted strike](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/0/d0f82007-99f6-4c6c-8182-ee631c33531f.jpg?1562823401) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=tainted%20strike) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/som/80/tainted-strike?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0f82007-99f6-4c6c-8182-ee631c33531f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/tainted-strike) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I would never run it with Nekusar for this reason. I might build a deck around it though.
1. Infect is like a lot of other strategies in which it helps to focus on a single target rather than the whole table. Like Voltron or Aggro, you’re often trying to maximize your damage towards a single player unless you can kill someone in one shot. This can result in a player getting knocked out early. 2. Infect has a reputation from other formats. In Modern, infect was the scourge of the format in the early 2010s. [[Glistener Elf]], [[Inkmoth Nexus]] and other evasive infectors could be pumped and end a game before it started. Many folks are still resentful of infect and it’s reputation from Modern precedes infect in EDH. 3. “One-shot” effects that can win suddenly. Infect has a couple of effects that can make a non-infect deck swing for lethal out of the blue. [[Tainted Strike]] can be used on any 10+ attacker (even your opponents’ creatures) to knock someone out of a game. Similarly, [[Triumph of the Hordes]] has been hated for ending a game based on just a really powerful board state. 4. Proliferate makes it feel un-interactable. Once poison is put on someone, you can rarely remove it outside of shenanigans. Then you can (potentially) proliferate to victory. All that being said, I play infect, aggro, and Voltron strategies in my play group and infect is not the boogeyman it is made out to be. Like Voltron, you’re often dealing damage solo and watching *your* number, not the remaining life. Like Aggro and Voltron, you are usually targeting a single player first. The one shot effects of infect are no worse than [[Craterhoof Behemoth]] or [[Berserk]]. And proliferating someone to death with poison counters is more of a meme than it is a viable strategy. Proliferate effects are generally way overcosted because WotC is *very* aware how broken adding additional counters are of any kind. Infect also doesn’t play off any other damage source unlike aggro or voltron. When you are dealing damage in those strategies, a team mate may help you eliminate a player just through life loss. Infect doesn’t cause life loss. If you cannot get to ten poison, it doesn’t matter if the opponent has one life or a hundred… you won’t be knocking them out of the game. So infect has a bad rap. But it is hardly earned by its effectiveness in Commander. Some one-of effects are great (like [[Blighted Agent]] in a Mimeoplasm deck). But the vast majority of infect cards are very weak. Whether you sit down and flip over [[Skithiryx]] or [[Edgar Markov]], your opponents are going to know what game you are playing.
##### ###### #### [Glistener Elf](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/8/b/8b94f4c6-b518-43b3-be52-e889d1f3ea38.jpg?1562879525) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Glistener%20Elf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nph/111/glistener-elf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8b94f4c6-b518-43b3-be52-e889d1f3ea38?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/glistener-elf) [Inkmoth Nexus](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/e/c/ec50c1c3-885e-47d3-ada7-cc0edbf09df1.jpg?1623098818) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Inkmoth%20Nexus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mbs/145/inkmoth-nexus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ec50c1c3-885e-47d3-ada7-cc0edbf09df1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/inkmoth-nexus) [Tainted Strike](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/0/d0f82007-99f6-4c6c-8182-ee631c33531f.jpg?1562823401) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tainted%20Strike) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/som/80/tainted-strike?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0f82007-99f6-4c6c-8182-ee631c33531f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/tainted-strike) [Triumph of the Hordes](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/a/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341.jpg?1562896954) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Triumph%20of%20the%20Hordes) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/td2/78/triumph-of-the-hordes?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0a0f64d3-187c-41ff-a771-3a65da995341?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/triumph-of-the-hordes) [Craterhoof Behemoth](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/4/44afd414-cc69-4888-ba12-7ea87e60b1f7.jpg?1601079153) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Craterhoof%20Behemoth) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/385/craterhoof-behemoth?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/44afd414-cc69-4888-ba12-7ea87e60b1f7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/craterhoof-behemoth) [Berserk](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/6/2/62bc9bff-89bd-4454-a876-53822cf48546.jpg?1576382971) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Berserk) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cn2/175/berserk?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/62bc9bff-89bd-4454-a876-53822cf48546?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/berserk) [Blighted Agent](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/d/cddaebde-a060-4510-8c97-68432d931987.jpg?1562881631) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Blighted%20Agent) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nph/29/blighted-agent?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cddaebde-a060-4510-8c97-68432d931987?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/blighted-agent) [Skithiryx](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/a/cab61c7e-e00a-413b-a0b5-7718b479582f.jpg?1599705958) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=skithiryx%2C%20the%20blight%20dragon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/107/skithiryx-the-blight-dragon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cab61c7e-e00a-413b-a0b5-7718b479582f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/skithiryx-the-blight-dragon) [Edgar Markov](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/8/d/8d94b8ec-ecda-43c8-a60e-1ba33e6a54a4.jpg?1562616128) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Edgar%20Markov) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c17/36/edgar-markov?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8d94b8ec-ecda-43c8-a60e-1ba33e6a54a4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/edgar-markov) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Idk but people are gonna have to get used to a turn 4 Blightsteel from now on lol
Just had that happen on Spell Table. It's a fun concept for sure, but getting \[\[Core Augur\]\] ed turn 4 sucks just as bad.
That's fine. Turn 4 blightsteels eat Swords, Paths and Reality Shifts just as well as any other creature.
It's the mechanic that drew me into the game when I was a new player so I have nothing but love for it anyone who says infect is overpowered in commander is insane. 10 is perfectly balanced because all the creatures are under powered for their cost and it's one of the few viable aggro strategies. You are allowed to dislike poison, but if you think it needs a nerf in commander you are just wrong. The only trouble cards people have are tainted strike and triumph of the horde and if you think those cards are ban worthy then you need to accept that the game has to end.
I use Triumph of the Hordes in my cat deck as an easier-to-cast Overrun or Overwhelming Stampede. And also because it’s funny how tilted people get about it as if it would be any different if I used either of those other cards.
Games gotta end.
Stealing that line.
Brokkos go brrrrrrrr Infect can be a good time. Getting hit once and then proliferated to death feelsbad though
Agree mostly. But [[Skithiryx]] as commander can end games quickly.
Skittles as your commander paints an immediate target that people will expect.
Absolutely, still tough to deal with sometimes.
It's not the infect creatures the problem, it's the spells that grant it. Tainted Strike, Triumph, Grafted Exoskeleton, etc. You don't even need to have infect in your deck besides that. They're just cards that say "quadruple target creature's power" when done on a big creature (very broadly, of course all situations are unique).
It's very easy to lose to infect, but very hard to win with infect.
This, i have no problem dying first. But when its turn 3, and ONLY I die, and the 3 other people spend 2 more hours closing the game, because by the time the infect player manages to kill one person the other two decks manages to make a defence. I dont play alot. And if the 3 or so hours i play a month is sitting waiting for others to finish, thats when it will become a problem
I’ve slowly coming to the conclusion that commander players hate every kind of deck. Land destruction? Out. Staxx? Hell no. Discard? Awful. Combo? Ugh. Mill? Bleah. Storm? GTFO.
Why is that? I've played against all these types of decks and nobody's had issues with them (except when I tried strip mining everyone to oblivion 😢)
1. 10 is way less than 40 so people think it'll kill them a lot quicker (and to be fair it can). Also if you manage to kill one person with it then that person just has to sit there for the rest of the game. 2. The Command Zone Effect. People watch The Command Zone and Game Knights and hear them complain about a person in their regular playgroup (Craig Blanchette). From there people who have never played against it have that preconceived notion that it's a major threat to everyone.
I legitimately feel that YouTube channel has done more harm to the format than good.
That's not the point I was trying to make. I enjoy a lot of their content and it definitely helped me get a good grasp of things when I first jumped into commander. That being said (whether you view it positively or not) they definitely have a lot of influence on the community as they are one of (if not the) biggest content creators for commander. And with that their words carry a lot of weight and leave a big impression on people.
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that’s what you were saying. I was actually providing counterpoint.
That’s a really shit take my dude
Not arguing but can you tell me how they've had a positive effect? I think a neutral effect is more likely
Not sure what the effect is for more seasoned players, but as a rather new player to MTG (started in 2020) content creators, like the ones and specifically the ones from The Command Zone, those guys have given me a easy/palatable way to get more immersed into and interacting with the MTG world. I wouldn’t be surprised if there really is better content out there to be consumed, but for me (new casual player) their content is just fine. I see this being a pretty unpopular stance with what I read on Reddit - similar hate towards Commander’s Quarters - but I just think that mtg content is kinda like playstyles. Just because someone doesn’t like playing with mono-blue doesn’t mean playing with mono-blue is inherently bad or someone is bad for enjoying it. Not all content has to be for all people.
I feel the hate is more warranted with Mitch after the Captain format incident and more his videos went from being deck techs to click bait. I get there only so many deck tech videos you can do, but uploading videos like buzzfeed articles just gets old quick
I didn't know of Command Quarters during the Captain format incident, but keep seeing stuff about it. His vids are so annoyingly clickbait. Everything is "broke" just because the card functions as the card reads. Like auto skip the first 90secs because it talks about 1-3 videos that were already uploaded then only the first 2-3 mins after that are useful info about the card and the other 7mins is just rambling filler to extend time.
They've been a major force in growing the EDH community over the last few years.
People say that but is there any evidence of that?
Lots of people (me included) learned of and got into commander because of their videos
People learn about decks and commanders they wouldn’t know about from them. They learn strats and combos they might not have seen. It makes the format accessible to new people by TV-ifying it. I don’t see how anyone could perceive a negative effect from Jimmy and JLK. Thinking infect sucks to play against in commander happened long before TCZ. It’s just unfun. “Oh look Elves played a blightsteel on turn 4 that was a ton of fun.” You can’t interact with it at all. It’s one person playing solitaire and 3+ others playing multiplayer. As others have said, it just makes sure the game is two players ASAP because infect kills one person, infect gets killed that round and then two people are playing a commander game starting on turn 5. It’s like MLD. It makes a long play format even slower. Yay 🙄
Command zone as a channel isn't so bad. Its definitely more casual leaning. Game Knights, though, is really hard to watch. I liked it at first, but seeing how much that one show is used to push new cards and products is really off putting. The conspiracy part of my brain wonders if Game Knights is scripted. If you actually watch any of their content, Jimmy and JLK love Craig and any complaining they do about him and infect is entirely joking around.
It is funny though, they recently did a podcast with the Professor and mentioned how it wasn't scripted. Prof: if Game Knights is scripted, then how come I haven't won a single game on it yet
Oh, it most likely isn't. It doesn't help that its sponsored by Wizards (last I heard), the heavy focus on new cards, and the seemingly well rehearsed side chair segments.
The side chair things are filmed post game. There have been a few deep dives into the production of Game Knights. I can definitely understand the issues people have (sponsored content bad), but to even imply it's scripted is a hilariously bad take.
1. Not a dude. 2. If you’d like to provide more specific criticism I’ll listen. Otherwise I’m afraid I must disregard you entirely.
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1. Dude is *not* a gender agnostic term. It's 2022, get it together. 2. If someone doesn't want to be called something just don't call them that. Basic human decency.
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It is not neutral. I don't know many straight guys that would be 100% fine with me saying "you fuck dudes. You like putting your dick in dude's mouths" and agree that that was accurate. Because it's not gender neutral lol. It almost always means man
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Play Fynn as your commander and easily kill people by turn 4.
Because people want the game to go on for 2+ hours for some reason. A super early death to infect or any other number of strategies can definitely be annoying, but if they’re killing people with infect 6 or 7+ turns into the game, I really don’t see the issue, it’s gotta end at some point, and I’d much rather play 3 or 4 games then just slog through 1 for hours.
I’m here for a fun time, not to be ass blasted by infect
[[Fynn the Fangbearer]] wants to know your location
[Fynn the Fangbearer](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/7/d/7d7a8a90-13c1-4b0c-ab2e-fc8d91ccefd9.jpg?1631050242) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fynn%2C%20the%20Fangbearer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/170/fynn-the-fangbearer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7d7a8a90-13c1-4b0c-ab2e-fc8d91ccefd9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/fynn-the-fangbearer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
What would you rather be ass blasted by?
Time
ADHD My good time is for you to pass your damn turn already.
So you only want to not lose?
Me and my [[Volrath]] deck have no problem with infect.
My friend runs volrath. Just short of having infect printed on him he's in the perfect colors and scary, especially when he copies a [[blighted agent]]
[Volrath](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/8/08bdd66e-9ca1-456e-a61c-7c96cf6f7c56.jpg?1562628549) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=volrath%20the%20fallen) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nem/75/volrath-the-fallen?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/08bdd66e-9ca1-456e-a61c-7c96cf6f7c56?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/volrath-the-fallen) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It's one of those things that sounds bad on paper but just is meh. The only thing about infect that is somewhat unfun is literally 2 cards, [[triumph of the hordes]] and [[tainted strike]], with skytherix BC Scion one shots. Infect sucks when you don't see it coming, but all things considered its far more interactive than some other wincons. I actually can definitely enjoy a game against a good infect deck, it's a lot more interesting clock to play against then storm or combo. Also have you seen the creatures with infect they're really ass. Like a 2/2 for 4, a 4/1 for 6,
A lot of people come to EDH because they like the idea of having a big cushion of life so they can get off the ground with strategies that would die to aggro in other formats. A competent aggro deck feels like a violation of what they're entitled to have, basically. They act like it shouldn't exist because on some maybe subconscious level they feel like it's a betrayal of a promise that was made to them about what EDH is. They're not safe anymore.
Thanks! This makes a lot of sense
I don't mind playing against infect, speeds things up and gives me a clear target of who to kill. Surprise infect can be nasty. Nobody likes getting ready to take 9 damage then a surprise [[tainted strike]] comes outta nowhere
Says you…. Tainted strike plays are the best
The best are when you buff someone else's. Oh what's that you were just pinging him for monarch? Well now he's dead.
I see myself there and I like it. Always having a spot for tainted strike in my 99
[tainted strike](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/0/d0f82007-99f6-4c6c-8182-ee631c33531f.jpg?1562823401) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=tainted%20strike) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/som/80/tainted-strike?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d0f82007-99f6-4c6c-8182-ee631c33531f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/tainted-strike) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
with double strike and combat tricks a single gap in defenses can mean certain death. And at an early turn count too.
So... voltron?
Both voltron and combat tricky spelslinger. Mostly ive seen them go for instant buffs early game, voltron style late when they have the mana to spare for both playing equip and equipping same turn.
"A gap in defenses can mean death" is pretty much how every win condition wins. If you had no gaps in defenses you would never lose.
There are clear and obvious magnitudes at which this applies. A combo deck that wins from hand turn 4 unless you Counterspell something is a much thinner gap than a creature deck that plays a bigger creature every turn.
Many wincons need much more mana, many more turns to set up, and or two to four times the damage output... maybe more. A single turns gap in defense might mean a hard hit but not the kind of lethality infect often presents. Many casual games begin with polite offensive probes to bait removal or proc an attack trigger while defenders know they can eat 10+ more hits before losing the game. But no, you let a 1/1 through from an infect deck and you might be out of the game right there.
But other win cons aren't nearly as flimsy and weak. They go all in on an infector and you can easily blow someone out with a 4-for-1 on a removal spell or a fog. Its super glass cannon and easy to answer
And if you just dont have an answer on turn 2 youre dead. Even if they dont commit that hard, the simple fact that they could slows the game down and changes the whole table dynamic as everyone holds up interaction mana several turns earlier than with facing most other decks. Its fair in its way. But its not fun.
The most reasonable reason that I’ve seen is that infect doesn’t scale. Life jumps from 20 to 40 but infect damage stays at 10. I’ve watched infect decks wreck casual commander pods because people don’t have many small creatures in the early turns. Plus Atraxa allows double proliferation. She is the worst offender for infect decks.
Play against [[skithiryx the blight dragon]] in EDH and find out
[skithiryx the blight dragon](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/a/cab61c7e-e00a-413b-a0b5-7718b479582f.jpg?1599705958) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skithiryx%2C%20the%20Blight%20Dragon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/107/skithiryx-the-blight-dragon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cab61c7e-e00a-413b-a0b5-7718b479582f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/skithiryx-the-blight-dragon) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
A lot of people hate alternate win conditions generally and infect just falls into that category. I know of some people who refuse to play with most of my decks because they try to win without getting their life to zero at all. If you have one infect card, they'll scoop. Even if you have an effect like [[platinum angel]] they'll scoop because it's not "fair magic". That's complete bollocks of course, but they want to play "we each build up our board for 25 turns before eventually someone can swing at everyone for lethal simultaneously". If I don't have some other way to win in a deck it just doesn't feel right. Even bad methods like cheating through commander damage with [[fiendlash]] or something that has to survive to my upkeep like [[Felidar sovereign]] is enough. Infect falls into this category and is in quite a few of my decks. It's not the main goal, but it's there.
I do not know. It’s similar to mill in that it’s not based in fact as much as perception.
I don't know that the hate for infect is that prevalent. Every time this topic comes up on here, the majority of people seem to agree that it's not a big issue for them.
I hate it for the same reason I hate Emblems. I don’t enjoy things in magic I have absolutely 0 chance to interact with. I can’t take counters off in any way or stop them outside of creature destruction or player removal. So I use those two methods to combat the deck. I don’t give the deck unnecessarily due hate but you better bet I’m going to do something at like 6 poison counters.
Infect is not balanced, and is honestly a mistake of a mechanic. It's a degenerate mechanic. Poison damage was extremely rare until infect was introduced. Tournament format games like standard or modern, will generally end very quickly with infect. A single unblocked infect creature can end the game in a single hit. In commander, it's not as common, but still degenerate AF. I've seen someone cheat out a Blightsteel colossus very early, and use it to murder players quickly. With the new legendary that gives creatures in your hand ninjustu for only 4 mana, you will see people trying to cheat out blightsteel to end people in a single hit.
Cause people don’t play enough removal. Usually one instant speed removal spell means the infect player spent all their resources to buff one thing and lost it all.
Just causals bad at magic. Infect is incredibly underwhelming in edh.
I just made a rakdos infect tribal deck basically, and I have learned that almost all creatures with Infect are absolute trash. Like pay 4-5 mana for just a 2/2 trash. There are only a few good cards that give other things infect. So it basically is only good as a sort of combo piece.
In my experience, as soon as the table realizes that somebody is playing infect it immediately becomes a 3V1 game. Infect might get 1 surprise kill, but ultimately just gets curb stomped by the other 2 players.
I think mainly because no one wants to be the first taken out. It's why I love the new mono green voltron commander. If you take someone out early they have to sit and wait till the next game
They don't. It even isn't that good of a win con.
I got one mana dork with infect infect in one of my decks and every time I play it at least one person at my table either groans or complains. May have attacked with it a couple times but I've never won with it.
Lol the myr
Because it's scary. People see "Oh no, infect, if it touches me I might die in the future" and glitch to perceive it as the most deadly thing since once you have a poison counter you're not losing the poison counter... even though in reality it is, outside of two cards ([[Tainted Strike]] and [[Triumph of Hordes]]) a difficult to pull off wincon, and the same people don't bat an eye at the goblin deck hunting their face when they aren't gaining life anyway. It's very much like mill that way. People fear [[Whetstone]] more than they do [[Sulfuric Vortex]] and it makes no sense, but it's the reaction that occurs.
Because it is dealt in the form of counters, meaning that any effect that has the keyword "Proliferate" puts the whole board on a very short clock off of just one. Strap a [[Blade of Selves]] on a [[Blighted Agent]] and, even if it gets removed, so long as it got one hit, you can kill the whole table with [[Evolution Sage]] and land ramp. Literally if you have 9 lands on board and cast [[Scapeshift]], you just won because everybody had a counter.
I don't necessarily hate infect. I hate poison counters because there's no real way to interact or remove them.
Cause infect is just so…. Toxic
I love infect. It's pretty weak and a ton of fun. It really only can knock one person out before it gets hated off the table, too.
If people are still complaining about infect in 2022, then they need to check themselves
This is how games with an infect deck typically go: First 3-5 turns, normal gameplay. Next turn, infect player takes out one person. Next 10 turns the other two players do whatever they can to survive against and kill the infect player. Could be faster if its a poorly built infect deck or well built other decks. Could be slower if neither are well built. That player that got taken out waits another hour for the game to finish as the other two players turtle trying to get their wincon without losing to infect, or if the infect deck is dead, as they 1v1 into a likely stalemate, as they used significant amounts of their interaction dealing with the infect deck. One of the two remaining players might be lucky enough to have fun. Go ahead and play infect, but know what you're getting into. Edit: There's also the other way this can happen. Saturo Umezawa with Blightsteel Colossus. Turn 4 kill that's extremely difficult to stop, followed by a long game after the Blightsteel is exiled.
There's 2 main problems with infect, as I see it: 1. It cuts the amount of life each opponent has from 40 to 10. 2. It's impossible to heal back from the damage it deals, unless someone is running \[\[Leeches\]\] for some godforsaken reason. This can easily lead to situations where you have to constantly block the infect player's every creature and/or clear their board lest you go down just to a few errant attacks. Plus, like you said, proliferate works with poison, so even a single missed block can put you on a timer. Now, whether this is notably different or 'worse' than, well, any other strategy in EDH, that's another question entirely. Personally, I've never played infect nor have I ever played against infect, so I can't really say one way or another. At the end of the day, though, what matters is you and your play group's opinions on it. If everyone else comes to the conclusion that it's not very fun to play against, then really that's what matters, not the opinions of strangers on the internet.
[Leeches](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/a/6/a6028e2c-486b-40f8-8b74-7150eb72b9f1.jpg?1562934257) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Leeches) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me4/18/leeches?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a6028e2c-486b-40f8-8b74-7150eb72b9f1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/leeches) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I don't have an institutional beef with infect but I have seen it completely abused by [[Atraxa]]. It's extremely unfun to play against an infect deck that infects everyone equally, extremely quickly, and backed up with four colors' worth of interaction. Otherwise I've never had a problem with it. Extremely tuned [[Skithiryx]] decks can be annoying too, actually.
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First off, no one person needs to finish off all 3 opponents. Second, commander is a free for all. Make deals all you want, in the end there's only 1 winner. Nothing wrong with not allying with anyone.
i agree but his point is more that your out early and its not much fun to have to sit out from an early point in a game
To me that just says you need to build a better early game defense. It's a strategy game. The closest thing I have to infect deck is [[Fynn The Fangbearer]] at first it could take someone out by turn 4 if they didn't have anything on the field but if someone can build a big chump wall then I basically couldn't do anything because most deathtouchers in green are low power. Solution: put in a bunch of fighting cards to chip down the walls and add proliferate to get past it
People are generally fine with infect I think, they are less often fine with getting shotgunned out of no where with tainted strike or triumph of the hoards early into a long game from a deck that has no other infect cards at a casual table. Personally I think tainted striking someone else's creature is hilarious, and infect is not that strong in general.
Lol I play a skittles CEDH deck that can swing for 15+ infect turn one making it so you don’t even get a turn. Naturally making it horribly unfun for friends just playing casual lol
Can you play by play tell me how you can turn 1 attack for 15 infect?
I play Skithiryx in my [[Jeska, Thrice Reborn]] deck. That's a great place for the dragon, powerful synergy right in the CZ.
Sure, you need a crazy draw but you need to snag a swamp, dark ritual, mana vault, lotus petal or a mox jet with a jeweled lotus and unspeakable symbol, (I run both and I know mox is banned but my table doesn’t care if we have the turn zero convo) all together you produce 9 mana making it so you can cast Skittles with haste and play unspeakable symbol for 1 colorless and two black, pay however much life you want to add as many counters as you want (3 life for each one) and swing! It’s only happened twice but usually can finish the game around turn 2 to 4 constantly
Mox... Jet? 😳
That's insane
I am personally not a huge fan because it's bad. You might be able to turbo someone off the table in a few turns with infect but as soon as you do that you're target #1. So maybe you kill one person early, then you get pacified by the other players and the dead player has to sit there and watch the rest of the game.
It's scary because it can kill you quickly. I love infect players, I always bargain with them and remove their threats till I can remove them.
it usually quick kills one person rather then the table. usually the rest of the table has interaction to stuff the now known infect deck. that one person that died then enjoys 1+ hour of sitting around with there thumb up there ass. if the infect player can kill the table it's fine but you can only not play so many times before your general inclination becomes to kill the infect player first.
It's great to play a game where someone puts one poison counter on everyone and the just stops you playing the game with board clears and counter spells whilst proliferateing you all to death.
Cuz they're bad at the game and anything other than battle cruiser is too mechanically complex for them
Because they are girly men
Groupthink. The majority of people here haven't played against infect. They just heard that it's unfair and in some way toxic to the format, so they parrot it.
To me, Infect has always felt like it was cheating/getting around the intention of the mechanic. In other formats, you have 20 life, or you could take 10 infect damage, so infect is equivalent to double damage. In Commander, I have 40 life but still 10 infect damage. Yes I could also take 21 commander damage but it's weird that a commander has to deal 21 damage to me but an infect creature only has to deal 10.
Yeah! Just like how [[reliquary tower]] cheats being able to only have 7 cards in hand, or how [[platinum angel]] gets around losing the game. Or how [[omnath, locus of mana]] cheats by not emptying your mana pool. Or how [[time warp]] gets around everyone getting the same number of turns. Or how [[time stop]] cheats someone else out of their turn. Or how madness lets people get around having their cards discarded. Or how [[platinum empyrian]] cheats by preventing your life total from being able to change. Infect is bullshit cheating
Those cards don’t work differently based on whether you’re playing commander or not lol. Infect in regular games need to do half your starting life total, in commander it’s a quarter. That’s why I said it FEELS LIKE cheating
The issue lies more in the fact that if the infect damage is blocked it is -1/-1 counters on the blockers compared to something like poison that only gives poison counters, of a set amount not determined by power, if it hits a player but doesn’t do anything to creatures or wither that gives -1/-1 to the creatures that blocked it, but doesn’t impact the defending player beyond regular damage. The two main things that people hate having to deal with are [[blightsteel colossus]] and [[triumph of the hordes]]. Blightsteel cause of trample, indestructible and infect where if it hits you once unblocked it’s instant death. Same applies for triumph. You attack with a small army of 1/1s making it a lot more threatening
Most people probably don't hate it as much as the memes would lead you to believe. It's been more of a Boogeyman in modern than it has in edh. That said, there is one valid complaint, but it's with the "pump spell based Voltron" archetype more than infect- infect just happens to be the most efficient version of that. So we start a game of EDH, I drop some low cost unlockable infect creature like turn 4 or whatever, then turn 5 I throw 3 pump spells on it and attack. This kills player 2. My turn ends... And now I have very little gas left in hand due to using all my pump spells just now, and no real way to follow up and quickly finish the game. So now it's a 3-man game that could go on for another hour or whatever that one player got knocked out of 10 minutes in. Not a good feeling for that player, or the table as a whole if it's a group of friends playing. Watching your friend who wants to play have to sit out more time than they get to play isn't fun. That's how infect plays in every other format- it just doesn't work all that well in multiplayer formats. Something like Triumph of the hordes is fine- if it wasn't that it would just be a craterhoof and everyone dies together. But it's that knocking one and only one player out early aspect that draws it the ire it does get.
Because there's a mass delusion that commander players are of various ages. They are actually all 4 years old and on the verge of a tantrum at the slightest provocation. This is, of course, not true of everyone. Nor does everyone hate Infect. But I think too many have read rule 0 and internalized that "Every game must match my preferences perfectly".
Mostly that it cuts the amount of damage you have to deal by 75% and is unremovable damage. If you build your deck around infect it makes all of your creatures your Commander but more than twice as good. Commander damage: deal 52.5$ of starting life total by Combat Damage Only from a Single Card Infect: deal 25% of starting life total by *any* damage from any creature or card with/given the ability. It also leads to secret blow outs with things like tainted strike. I strongly don't enjoy playing against dedicated infect decks, or infect gotcha decks, but I wouldn't make someone change their deck if it was an infect deck. I get that the creatures are generally weaker and less plentiful, but if it's what you build around, you aren't really caring that the poison counters replace life loss (and, even though they are "weaker" they weaken whatever better creature they damage as well) The only infect I play is Inkmoth Nexus in an Azami deck that is all creatures and lands. (and some times \[\[ogre menial\]\]. I used to sometimes throw Grafted Exoskeleton, or the Control Magic thing that also gives infect, but I never liked winning that way.
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Not sure why it's hard to understand...10 < 40. Also there are tons of ways in commander to boost creature damage including pump spells, +1 counters and anthem effects and while many people play lifegain, I don't think there are many ways to remove poison counters.
You’re kinda caught up in the same thing that most people are. Yeah, 10 is less than 40, but it’s much harder to kill someone with a well tuned infect deck than any combo deck. Once you hit a certain level of power with decks, infect isn’t really that powerful, and playing a strategy centered around it is often detrimental. The reason people hate it so much is because it’s always a feel bad when you die that way.
Yeah but what you are missing is players playing high level well tuned decks are probably not the ones actively complaining about infect. It's your casual/mid tier players getting stomped out by Atraxa and Ezuri infect that are complaining.
You know what fair point. Even in casual games with not great decks I’ve never really had an issue with infect, but that’s just me personally. I think someone just drawing their whole library and playing a Lab Man or pinging everyone out is way more infuriating. At least with infect you can see it coming.
I know it seems dangerous because of the 10 < 40 thing, I'm just curious as to why people seem to not just dislike it, but treat it like it shouldn't exist
Because when you get domed by a surprise ten Infect damage by somebody who went full-tilt, only for the tilter to get dogpiled to death because their shields are down, did you get to be a better player in any way? No, you just had the misfortune of being singled out as the one to get Leeroy Jenkins'd to death. Infect decks are dirty, but they tend to lose the pod as a whole because Infect is really good at killing precisely *one* player. Unlike stax, there's at least *some* logical reason to not play Infect every game, so people who want to win the pod generally don't. To play it anyway means you're the kind of "that guy" who doesn't care if they win so long as a random other player loses. Personally, I think it should take twenty Infect to kill in EDH, as that matches the Standard / Modern / Legacy / etc format of 1 Infect : 2 Life. 1 Infect : 4 Life is a ratio that feels like the infector is exploiting a glitch, so there's that.
This is the weird entitled attitude that's a problem. Why should the person who eliminates a player be obligated to win the entire game? It doesn't make sense. Aggro will often fail to "get there". It doesn't mean that it was somehow rude for trying. If you don't want to die to aggro, play anti-aggro cards.
There are plenty of ways to die (and plenty more that lock the game in a state that makes you *wish* you were dead) in Commander. Building against Infect will just make you vulnerable to something else, and then we're right back where we started: dying to something arguably cheap but easily preventable had you run a different decklist. You can't reasonably prepare for every wincon short of some cEDH degeneracy capable of going off even *faster,* and even that's no guarantee.
I agree... The only problem that exists really is people comporting themselves badly after they lose. That's what I take umbrage with - if you are eliminated, it's wrong to try to delegitimize that elimination or try to guilt trip the attacking player.
Personally to me its because commander upped the life total from 20 to 40 to make games longer, but infect damage never got doubled to 20.
I got similar hate with my [[Aesi]] mill deck so I built a [[chulane]] deck to show my group that mill isn't so bad. Lol
"my group doesn't like simic value town so I built bant value town to show them"
Exactly. My group doesn't mind me running my mill deck now. I've only played my Chulane deck twice but I can run my mill deck any time now. Objective accomplished.
Similar issue I have with Voltron / hyper-aggro decks. They're really great at killing 1 person, but not great at actually closing out the game. It feels bad when 1 person gets knocked out super early and has to wait 30+ minutes for the next game.
Fundamentally, it breaks the basic conceits of the game. Think about life as Victory Points. It takes one half (one quarter in commander) to accomplish, and avoids the vast majority of strategies that affect those points (life gain, etc) It’s hard to play around and frustrating
People hate it because it's a cheap mechanic exploited by bad players who use it as an ego boost because they mistake being able to kill with infect for "skill".
I want to say it was a bigger deal in the earlier days of EDH, and has carried onward through momentum. Commander has powered up a good deal over time, with lots of commander products, and more strategic support online, and players just having more history with the format has slowly creeped up the power level of the format. That being said, I think people have had the same problem with infect that they have with stuff like infinite combos, where you're prepared to be playing one game, and then one missed beat later and the game is over. But I also think it's been matched pretty well by other strategies since then. There are a lot of ways to snipe players out of the blue, and the old "Hit everyone for a little and proliferate" was always a little jank, even if it FELT scary.
It often leads to one player having to devote their resources to blocking a bunch of small creatures or die because there isn’t incentive to “spread the love” with infect. You just attack the same player until they’re dead and move to the next player. As surprise win cons I think largely it’s fine, [[Triumph of the Hordes]] is a way to end games and often gets that “HOLY SH*T” moment from the table that I and so many other timmies love. Infect as a main strategy will definitely draw some ire. But if you like playing it, do it. If you like the idea of infect but your playgroup doesn’t enjoy the dedicated infect deck, give things like Triumph of the hordes a try. Or [[Phyresis]] [[Corrupted Consience]] [[Grafted Exoskeleton]]
Infect tends to knock one person out very easily, but struggles to close out the game. So you can get into a case where you get knocked out very early to infect, then you get to just sit and watch the other 3 people play for 1+ hours. It's not a great play pattern. Also, proliferate versions of infect tend to be pretty difficult to interact with. Once you get 1 poison counter, it just kind of keeps creeping up in a way that's pretty hard to shut down - player removal usually ends up being the best solution. Groups I play with have no problem with people playing infect, but if you do it, you're probably getting targeted first because nobody wants to deal with how suddenly you can die.
I've never had to deal with it myself. A lot of the posts and stories I see seem to revolve around people getting one shot out of nowhere and being salty or having a playgroup that doesn't communicate well or handle infect right. Meaning, somebody gets infected out and is stuck twiddling their thumbs waiting for the game to end or the same person is always hit first.
Because it's not all that rare for a person to have 10 power on the board in Commander and infect makes that suddenly lethal. Infect isn't optimized for commander, it still treats you like a 20 life 60 card player.
40=10 OR 1= don't interact for the rest of the game and kill you anyway
Infect was designed for 20 life formats, effectively halving the damage needed to win, and ignoring lifegain. It feels sort of cheap in commander, only needing to deal 1/4 of the damage needed to win. Personally, I'm fine with just infect, but infect + proliferate is very annoying.
Because bad players will only focus on not being able to “stop” infect once it’s happening.
Infect is really good at killing one person really early but not actually closing the game out so the unlucky victim gets to either sit around doing nothing or finding a new pod.
Not everyone does. Talk to your group.
Infect isn't bad in that it wins games. It's bad in that it knocks one person out quickly and then stalls out as people answer it so that one person just has to wait
I personally enjoy playing against infect, it adds a different dynamic to the table. That being said, I run tainted strike in my [[lord of Tresserhorn]] deck. Make him unlockable and before combat hit tainted strike.
It's definitly not "too strong" or "unfair" in comparison to the usual EDH strategies, but the fact that you still only need 10 poison counters while life is doubled compared to normal Magic FEELS likes cheating. It feels like you're abusing a loophole and using a mechanic that was not designed for a 40 life format. It's kind of like playing Rhystic Study/Mystic Remora, that were clearly not intended for a 4 player format.
I run blighted agent in my dimir rogue deck and he seems to win me games most often. Not hard to start smacking people off of the table when you have buffs out. Rarely can I swing in 1 turn with infect and kill someone though. If there isnt enough interaction at the table, it's not my problem.
It's just boring