Infectious Defiance

My previous infect deck that I talked about was one of the more standard controlling types of infect decks. It was not fast and relied on managing what your opponent could and could not do and gradually poisoned them through proliferation. Speed always had been a problem for infect oriented decks, but with the arrival of two new cards infect decks infect decks can now potentially achieve a 3rd turn kill.

The most recent expansion to come from Wizards of the Coast (Avacyn Restored) contains the card that has really shook up infect decks, it is Wild Defiance. This simple enchantment allows your infectious creatures to become super massive, and only having to deal 10 points damage to a player does not take long. With this card in play a plain old 2/2 Ichorclaw Myr becomes an eye-watering 9/9 when you cast a Titanic Growth on it.

The other card that is being reprinted in the forthcoming Magic2013 or if you have the original from the old Urza's Legacy set is Rancor. While this card does not trigger the Wild Defiance ability it does provide one important feature - Trample. And a trample that comes back even if your creature gets taken out.

So what is the core strategy behind a infect deck that is based around Wild Defiance & Rancor? Well its actually quite simple..

• Small, fast, and cheap infect creatures.
• Cheap instant and sorcery cards to inflate your poison creatures.

The first part of choosing creatures is fairly straightforward, as there is only a limited number of infect creatures in the first place, and an even smaller number of them that meet the criteria of being fast and cheap (2 or less mana).

The selection of instant and sorcery spells that could be used is vast so some care needs to be taken here when making a selection with the main criteria being that the casting cost of the spells should only be 1 or 2 mana.

To find the best cards for this deck requires a bit of thinking. In order to kill our opponent we need to do damage quickly, so any card that provides increased power works as a double wammy with Wild Defiance. Big creatures are no good if your opponent can simply bring out a 1/1 blocker every turn, so cards that make your creatures unblockable, or give them trample are a good way around this. And you also need to protect your creatures as black creature removal will take out a 9/9 Ichorclaw Myr just as easily as a normal one. In addition to the actual powers granted by a spell, the meta abilities of a spell should also be taken into account. Any ability that allows a spell to be cast more than once works really well with Wild Defiance, so cards with Flashback, Rebound, and Buyback can work well here. Another thing to look for is the Phyrexian Mana capability allowing you to cast some spells such as Mutagenic Growth even when you don't have any mana available.

So here we have a deck that takes the above into account and can take out your opponent with lightning speed:

 

Infectious Defiance
Creatures 4 Glistener Elf 4 Blighted Agent 4 Ichorclaw Myr Land 4 Hinterland Harbor 4 Inkmoth Nexus 4 Island 8 Forest	Spells 4 Wild Defiance 4 Rancor 4 Might of Old Krosa 4 Vines of Vastwood 4 Mutagenic Growth 2 Ranger's Guile 2 Prey's Vengeance 2 Distortion Strike 2 Predator's Strike

The creatures that I have chosen for this deck are fairly obvious as they are the best cheap infect creatures in the game. The Glistener Elf is the only single mana infect creature, and the Blighted Agent & Ichorclaw Myr due to being impossible to block, or undesirable to block respectively. Potential other contenders would be the Blight Mamba, or the Plague Stinger if you wanted to make a variant of this deck with Black.

As mentioned earlier there are for key things we want in our instant & sorcery cards. Creature inflation, creature protection, unblockable creatures and trample. With trample becoming less important with the addition of Rancor. Creature inflation comes in the form of Might of Old Krosa which is easily superior to Titanic Growth, Mutagenic Growth, Prey's Vengeance, & Predator's Strike with Predator's Strike also giving trample, and Prey's Vengeance coming back for free the next turn. Creature protection comes from Vines of Vastwood & Ranger's Guile with both cards having the utility of inflating the creature they are also protecting. The only card granting unblockability is Distortion Strike, and as it has the rebound ability it will come back the next turn for free as well.

When looking at the mechanics of the cards, I have favoured the rebound ability over flashback and buyback. Buyback is generally too expensive in the context of this deck and would eat up too much mana. Flashback while better than buyback in terms of mana, and more flexible than rebound still requires mana to cast the spell the second time, and that's what gives rebound the edge.

As for sideboard considerations, certain cards fit in quite well. Gut Shot is an excellent utility card for dealing with annoying 1/1 creatures your opponent gets out early or also inflating your own creatures. Apostle's Blessing is another decent creature protection / potentially unblockable card. Counter magic is also important as there are some cards that can really kill this deck such as the Curse of Death's Hold.

One of the main problems that you can find with this deck is that it runs out of cards quickly, this can be quite problematic if you don't manage to kill your opponent early on. Further investigation could be done into using other cards to aid in drawing such as the Howling Mine, or Jace's Archivist, or other cards that allow you to sacrifice land such as Excavation, Sustenance, or Sylvan Safekeeper.