Best Infect Commander/Strategy?

[Slyvester12]

As many of my fellow deckstatisticians may have guessed, I have a deep and abiding love of the infect mechanic. Whether or not that makes me a terrible person I leave for the philosophers of deckstats. For everyone else, I've decided to try to make the best infect deck possible, and I'd like to hear your input.

1. Who's the best commander for infect? Do you go Skittles? Atraxa? Xenagos?

2. What's the best strategy? Play Ichor Rats and proliferate them to death? Cheat out a Blightsteel Colossus ASAP?

Ideally, I'm looking for a strategy that can really take advantage of infect, rather than say, playing an aggro deck and running Triumph of the Hordes. I'm okay with infect-like abilities like Marsh Viper and Swamp Mosquito. I'm okay with infect granting enchantments like Corrupted Conscience and Snake Cult Initiation.

Essentially, I just want the best version of a deck containing a lot of cards with infect printed on them. If it ends up not being the greatest, that won't surprise me. I just want to see where it goes.

[Aetherium Slinky]

Let's approach this analytically. The best colour for infect is black so regardless of what happens you need black in your arsenal. Other really powerful cards include Corrupted Conscience, Triumph of the Hordes and Blighted Agent. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have both blue and green in the mix, too. Green can offer some powerful ramp and blue has counterspells which means you'll just automatically win. Maybe we cut the infect idea and just use Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and ramp to oblivion...

Wait I got sidetracked. So black, blue and green. Atraxa sounds like the logical choice.

So how do we win? I think a mixture of strategies would offer you the most flexibility. I would go both tall and wide. Lots of small creatures with infect and a few ones (like Blightsteel Colossus and Blighted Agent + combat tricks like Howl from Beyond) that can win the game on their own. That would actually make it a very interesting deck I've not seen before: combat tricks and pump spells in EDH. Green and black can offer you the necessary voltron-y stuff you need at instant speed, blue has counterspells so you just automatically win. This supports the idea of Atraxa. I have no idea what you'll do with white because it's just not very relevant for anything. Maybe it gives indestructible or pro colour for that damage.

Speaking of, protection. You should run all the swords. Hey! White can find you the correct sword for each situation. Not only the swords pump your creatures, make them unblockable but also provide additional value in all forms of Magic. Blue can also find artifacts so this supports my thesis that with blue you'll just automatically win. Blue and green also have recursion so you can get your lost swords and pump spells back. Maybe we should just go full land ramp with Tatyova and maybe scrap the idea of infect?

Conclusion: you need small dorks with infect that are annoying to block but dangerous to let through. You want lots of combat tricks to give your creatures evasion and pump them to alpha strike people. You'll want some basic equipment to give evasion and pump the creatures. Atraxa can help you proliferate your damage should you not quite finish someone off.


EDIT: Sigil of Distinction, Colossus Hammer, Colossification, Rogue's Passage, Giant Growth, Protective Bubble

[WWolfe]

I agree with MustaKotka. The infect deck I had the most success with was Atraxa with some proliferate effects on top of the most reasonably costed infect creatures. It seems like for what you're wanting to do evasion would be a big key to be able to get them through with little risk of losing them.

Another option could be Saskia, you would lose access to blue but with red you would gain access to the damage boosting effects like Dictate of the Twin Gods. Besides, who doesn't like punching one person in the mouth and giving damage to another player as well.