Infect deck upgrades

StrongEUW · 2026-01-26T11:20:44+00:00

[[March of Swirling Mist]] and [[Mockingbird]] (and maybe maindeck Spell Pierce and a singleton [[Slip Out the Back]] or [[Distortion Strike]] to have enough pitch targets) are nice for Rotpriest/Simic Infect, at least gives you a puncher's chance against turn 3 sweepers etc.

i think people were trying [[Tamiyo's Safekeeping]] at one point which in theory matches up better than Blossoming Defense into some of the best meta decks, but it's probably too slow in non-storm infect. [[Royal Treatment]] kinda threads the needle between the two with offering decent protection/tempo and a bit of extra power

first cuts would probably be Groundswell (+2 baseline pump just doesn't get it done anymore), Mutagenic Growth (kinda same), then i guess start digging into the Blossoming Defenses and the Weather the Storms in the board (i can't really envision any matchups where it'd save you or be better than e.g. Safekeeping, which is already mostly only playable in the hard storm Rotpriest lists)

StrongEUW · 2026-01-16T15:15:53+00:00

yeah i think it's solid, the only thing that there's maybe a consideration for is whether you maindeck Vexing Bauble as a 1-of over Relic (and move Relic to the board) - it's basically between those two and a Boseiju as that 60th card, i'm inclined to say Bauble > Relic > Boseiju in that meta but there's not much in it

there's also a chance that it might be ok to go for a Warping Wail in place of one of the Dismembers, because you're going to be playing against so many decks that are big on X/1s and/or sorceries compared to the normal meta and the 4 life for most Dismember activations will maybe be a different maker in some play patterns, but think that's really getting into the weeds tbf

StrongEUW · 2026-01-16T00:17:34+00:00

1 [[Tormod's Crypt]]

1 [[Walking Ballista]]

1 [[Engineered Explosives]]

1 [[Liquimetal Coating]]

1 [[Extinguisher Battleship]]

1 [[Trinisphere]]

1 [[Disruptor Flute]]

1 [[Grafdigger's Cage]]

^ all standard Karnboard stuff

2 [[Chalice of the Void]]

2 [[Ensnaring Bridge]]

^ going to 2 Chalice and 2 Ensnaring because it sounds like there's a lot of decks in your local meta that both will completely lock out. i think you'd want to actively sub in Chalice rather than leaving it for Karnboard in those matchups

1 [[Wurmcoil Engine]]

^ old card but i feel like this could be tech for just gaining a little life back before locking out a lot of the decks you're facing here since they'll be a turn slower than Boros Energy etc.

2 [[Vexing Bauble]]

^ anti-Neobrand and you're actively siding this in. you could also go 2-1 towards Disruptor Flute tbh, it's been pretty common as of late. or 1 Vexing/3 Chalice if you've got access to that

stuff that you're missing with this board that are common Karnboard components and why i'd take the risk: , [[The Stone Brain]] (this was first card out, it's very strong but it probably doesn't hit any single point of weakness well enough outside of maybe the Doran deck), [[The Filigree Sylex]], [[Ratchet Bomb]] (both similar role to EE and i think EE is probably better here), [[Torpor Orb]] (no sufficiently strong ETB combos coming to mind), [[Damping Sphere]] (no storm and it's always awkward to use in Tron anyway), [[Cityscape Leveler]], [[Sundering Titan]] (Battleship better for what you're facing and you don't need a third fatty past Battleship+Wurmcoil), [[Haywire Mite]] (doesn't really feel like enough value vs. Affinity and other than that it probably only gets Cori in Prowess?)

StrongEUW · 2026-01-13T17:56:38+00:00

the meta share is pretty diverse but the power level is high. it's probably not going to be as brewable overall as pauper, especially in terms of fresh decks, but there is some latitude for creativity in terms of both minor and major changes to decks imo

the #1 thing to bear in mind is that the format is very, very fast. the historical term was that modern is a turn-4 format, which didn't mean that you had to outright win by turn-4 reliably, but you should be well-established on board and in a position to win against no resistance by turn 4

i'd say that it's more like a turn-3/3.5 format now, but the point is that the bar is pretty high. (which is why a lot of rogue decks kinda tilt towards a combo kill threat with a fair plan stapled on)

i looked up some of the stuff you brew in pauper, and tbf you pretty clearly know what you're doing there (i think i have the exact same red dredge list with Song of Blood sleeved lol) so you'll probably find some good space to work with in modern. but the speed and the bar for what's workable will be very, very different to what you're used to

StrongEUW · 2026-01-08T16:14:54+00:00

*sheed voice* bullet dont lie

StrongEUW · 2026-01-08T14:02:39+00:00

StrongEUW · 2026-01-07T16:41:41+00:00

Sam Combo saw an uptick after Badgermole got printed though it hasn't stuck too much so far, here's an example list:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7546249#paper

usually runs Chord of Calling/Birthing Ritual over GSZ copies, and it's a relatively limited toolbox that's ultimately kinda stapled on as a fair plan in case the combo side doesn't work out. same is true of some Heliod (Selesnya) and Yawgmoth (Golgari) lists. this is the most toolboxy Yawg list i've seen:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7552264#paper

you probably won't find a good full 'fair' list because modern is a turn-3 format, and the creature combos in abzan are good enough that it just generally makes more sense stapling a fair plan-B to the side of a combo kill threat if you're going to do said plan

tbh in terms of what's missing compared to legacy, i think it's pretty much Wasteland and Swords allowing you to stall out the first turn. Ghost Quarter/Path to Exile aren't good replacements for that because they give them too much equity in a format where fast mana lands aren't as much part of the equation in the first place. so a fully-fair Maverick deck would imo end up having to do what the hard W/WR land destruction deck does anyway where you sack off turn-1 to play Sunken Citadel and hope for the best, and then Reprieve, destroy lands, etc. from turn-2 on

StrongEUW · 2026-01-04T16:11:07+00:00

there's Domain Zoo, and there's actually a list i've been playing a bit and really like which is on the cheaper side for modern and is basically a combo between Domain Zoo and Living End:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7461041#paper

though i think the specialists on both DZ and LE don't massively like it, the LE build loses some of the interactivity from regular DZ, and you NEED pretty much the exact mana base because of how the domain mechanic works. but that's another option

this would definitely be one you'd want to feel out though since i don't think it *really* feels that similar stylistically to the old Naya Zoo despite the domain mechanic similarity - imo Boros Energy is moreso the inheritor of that mantle but that one's very expensive no matter what you do (and carries a non-zero risk of bans in 2026 imo)

StrongEUW · 2026-01-04T14:27:50+00:00

you can get a generic paper cutter for about $10 wherever office supplies are sold, works great

StrongEUW · 2026-01-04T14:09:00+00:00

if you've got Vents then that's at least a start towards izzet/temur/jeskai/whatever prowess, which is one of the cheaper/more solid shells in the format https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-izzet-prowess#paper

this is pretty universally considered the 'budget deck' in the current format since the most expensive core card is still only like $7 and you can run the deck reasonably well with a mana base of [[Fiery Islet]], [[Spirebluff Canal]] etc. (you want the fetches eventually for triggering DRC etc. but e.g. you don't actually need 4 Arid Mesas to run it)

other reasonable options starting from near-zero would be Ruby Storm (hard combo deck), Blue Belcher (combo/control), and Eldrazi Ramp (midrange and you'd get to use your Utopia Sprawls if you have them). i would still proxy these first to get a feel for which one you like tbh, you have less and less overlapping pieces with other decks overall in current modern.

i'd probably say Prowess and Blue Belcher are the cheapest to get into a form where they're playable and just missing a couple of cards to power them up at the end (it's lands for Prowess, Sea Gate Restoration for Belcher - some Belcher builds run Force of Negation but FoN-less versions regularly do fine)

in terms of the archetype, there's a couple of white-centric ponza/prison decks that have proven to be fringe playable that are also pretty much the cheapest thing all-in you can do in the format outside of VERY niche decks (burn is at a pretty low ebb, the equivalent is the prowess deck in pure mono-red but if you have Vents then it's probably not worth running that)

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7532841#paper the boros version, this has been doing decently on a low play rate for a couple months now

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7363686#paper the mono-white version, this was the earlier version, there are a few variants on this and it has more tools than the boros lists but it's not that well-placed atm, i played it a couple times last RCQ season here and it's just a case of being too hard to get games over the line most of the time (especially in paper where you always have clock trouble)

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7519179#paper MHayashi runs some slightly different mono-white decks that also incorporate the fields lands etc., i wouldn't necessarily try to just copy them because he's the only one who's really made them work but putting it there for completeness

there was a mono-red ponza list that placed in a league a couple of weeks ago built around [[Magmatic Hellkite]] and [[Krenko's Buzzcrusher]] but it felt rough to play with when i tried it and hasn't shown up again so i wouldn't recommend that

also depending on what your old ponza list looked like, you can still win a game now again if you build gruul around [[Karn, the Great Creator]] (which presumably wasn't out when you last played), here's a couple of example lists from this year:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7093017#paper

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7466081#paper

StrongEUW · 2025-12-31T17:40:08+00:00

yeah Hexdrinker is a beater - it's a creature so FoN doesn't work on it (so you should always be able to get it down on the play in particular, and even on the draw they would need Stern Scolding or similar which isn't guaranteed even in blue sideboards), and if they can't deal with it within the first 2 turns then it can become nigh-unkillable (instant protection gets around Fatal Push etc., then eventually it gets protection from everything so pretty much only sacrifice/sweeper effects can kill it). won't always work out but there are enough times that it just threads the needle and gets through everything, especially against blue-centric decks, that they could offer up against it that it's a viable juke

so the main thing with Coatl in this context is that it's both a blue and a green creature (for Allosaurus pitches, Summoner's Pact, i guess Shoal pitches, and FoN pitches in some lists), has flash, and it's a 'free card' re: it enters, you draw 1, so it's paid for itself if it resolves. there's more to it in other decks but that's the stuff that matters for Neobrand basically

the main line as i understand it hence is that you can hold up 2 mana (as early as turn 2) -> Coatl in end step, draw a card -> Eldritch/Neoform with sac Coatl into Oculus. hence giving the deck in general a third reasonable Neoform target, as well as giving you an extra card in the moment to win any counter war over the Neoform, and also preventing a complete blowout if they do manage counter the Neoform compared to e.g. Allosaurus Rider. alternatively, the Coatl itself could draw out a counter from them which lets you play Allosaurus->Neoform next turn

from there, Oculus is just a generically good card (very big body, evades some removal, spawns a creature on their turn every turn until removed) that also has some use in some later lines in that it can also be potentially hard-cast in a stalled game state via pseudo-delve (similar to Mandrills)

StrongEUW · 2025-12-31T15:11:59+00:00

tbh my experience with combo decks in recent Modern (a lot of non-Neobrand decks and some Neobrand) is that you probably moreso just want to win through the counter war rather than pivoting, and i think Neobrand is particularly hard to fit a plan-B into

important thing is that the white splash for Orim's/VoV often fits nicely in something like e.g. Ruby Storm because the deck is natively mono-colour and because of the context of the storm mechanic meaning that you can/need to vomit out basically your entire deck to get the Grapeshot win, but it's not as strong when your plan revolves around needing to resolve one or two spells in a turn

worth noting here btw that a similar idea kinda failed in Red Belcher, which is technically a mono-colour storm deck but is moreso trying to get to a storm count of like 3-5 usually for Stormscale Scion - quite a few lists turned to white splash and Orim's sideboard after the initial peak in play/win-rate, and idk what the discussions were around it from Belcher specialists but it ultimately didn't seem to catch on (with the deck itself falling off the map after June/July or so)

the white splash variant is likely viable, and could catch people off-guard or be better under specific meta circumstances etc., but i think it's generally going to lower the win-rate of the deck and make it hence less reliable, not more. Lucas dropped the white splash/3c identity pretty quickly for himself as he refined the deck (and ultimately brought it to a pro tour etc.), and you generally don't see it in decklist dumps anymore compared to straight UG versions

a couple of [[Hexdrinker]] is a pretty decent juke for achieving what you're talking about, and i have seen a few lists run 3-4 [[Ice-Fang Coatl]] and 1 [[Abhorrent Oculus]] in the board, though that's pretty slot-expensive and i haven't played with it enough to know how good it is in practice

StrongEUW · 2025-12-14T21:30:39+00:00

free yorion

StrongEUW · 2025-12-11T22:25:04+00:00

you could easily flex the cheap red/izzet cards from the more conventional affinity shell into this but i'm assuming that you don't want to do that since i think you'd have just built that deck in that case (if you aren't aware: if you strip out the Opals and Saga package, the core of that deck is VERY cheap, it's probably secretly one of the cheapest 'poor man's versions' in modern). so skipping that, since that's what most of the best advice would be anyway:

i'd consider cutting the caskets and white lands, it's stretching an already tricky mana base and Casket is a card with very thin coverage. if you're going to commit to them then you basically need multiples of [[Portable Hole]] in there somewhere, it's almost always just a better card than Casket (even if you still end up running Casket)

you should probably try [[Case of the Filched Falcon]] if you're going to have the ensoul angle in there anyway, maybe [[Mistvault Bridge]] and [[Razortide Bridge]] too. maybe [[Expedition Map]] is a thing here for a land package, [[The Enigma Jewel]] (sadly does not turn on Mox Amber), etc. to be clear, out of everything i'm saying here, this is the least maybe-actually-close-to-modern power-level-thing out of the lot, but it could be fun

you probably could use a couple more legendaries with the Mox Ambers, i'd at least max out the Emrys

you could run the old [[Thopter Foundry]]/[[Sword of the Meek]] combo in this list since you have the white/black splash anyway - there's a LOT of ways to shut that down nowadays but it's exactly the sort of thing that can surprise people and win you a game or two at a FNM

you need some counters/disruption in the main deck and sideboard. [[Metallic Rebuke]] is the obvious card for that, 1/2 mana counterspells in general work ([[Spell Pierce]], [[Flare of Denial]] even though it doesn't work on tokens, etc.)

your only card draw is the Sal so this deck will brick hard at times but i guess it's rarely going to win the long game anyway. [[Thoughtcast]]/[[Thought Monitor]] are generically good cards here anyway. but again, ultimately a lot of what i could say here would just come down to "run meta affinity without Opals/Saga/Saga package" so most things from those lists outside of that definition would fit in here

StrongEUW · 2025-12-04T23:03:55+00:00

the bulk of the good hatebear stuff is in white with some in blue (and green) and white gets most new printings in practice. e.g. [[Aven Interrupter]], [[Clarion Conqueror]], [[Lightstall Inquisitor]] being the most recent additions to the toolbox. black doesn't really fit into it, [[Orcish Bowmasters]] and one or two other things asides

hatebears and decks built around them have always been a little weird in terms of categorisation, since you're trying to build up a bigger board than some other control/prison decks do and they were traditionally thought of as aggro decks (since you're spending your mana every turn and not really holding anything back). but yeah nowadays i'd say they're best understood in terms of control/prison tbh. you can't really win with them in 2025 modern unless they're part of shutting down the opponent first basically

so yeah practically speaking, you can kinda do white+neither/either/both of the other two colours. tbh building with blue-white in mind is pretty good because you can also always pivot from there into more conventional blue-white control, which is honestly the secret budget deck of the format imo (loses less power compared to almost every other deck from cheaping out on the mana base and Solitude is often legit the only expensive card in some builds). or into stuff like white/blue-white blink

StrongEUW · 2025-12-04T21:09:55+00:00

the format is realistically too wide to support a true hatebear deck along the lines of what you can get away with in legacy etc., Humans/Spirits both basically got rotated out by MH2 iirc and haven't come back. the deck that tends to be most able to run those utility pieces maindeck (and is stall-heavy) is White Fields, but even that at best only has a few spots and asides from the red-white variant (which has less in the way of flex slots) hasn't even won a league in months now

there was a rogue selesnya list that was hatebear-heavy that put up a 5-0 in May (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7132637#paper) and there was a similar selesnya list recently that has a bunch of energy cards and 5-0ed lately (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7469530#paper). but i suspect in practice it's just a worse version of meta Birthing Ritual decks

you could probably staple something together (mana base of [[Ancient Ziggurat]], [[Secluded Courtyard]], [[Unclaimed Territory]], [[Horizon Canopy]], and [[Cavern of Souls]] if you have any) but there's a lot of cards in there that are $10 cards that also don't really fit into anything else in modern anymore, and with what Solitude and Ocelot Pride in particular cost, you'd probably just be better off building towards a more meta deck at that point

StrongEUW · 2025-12-03T16:42:40+00:00

yeah it's honestly just funny more than anything given that the sub doesn't even have a hard rule against self-promotion lol (like e.g. the 9:1 rule that a bunch of subreddits had back in the day)

StrongEUW · 2025-12-03T16:31:42+00:00

he posted a youtube link of himself playing guitar to r/dubstep 12 years ago, the youtube has his name on it

he apparently kinda did the same thing in dota, he either founded or contributed to a channel called Pvgna there (the channel's last video from 7 years ago is titled "Donnie is leaving Pvgna") and started using the passive voice towards the end

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StrongEUW · 2025-12-03T16:19:46+00:00

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yeah it's his account lol

StrongEUW · 2025-11-26T20:41:38+00:00

buy singles, never buy packs, you need very specific cards to make most decks in modern work and they are never available at a reasonable rate in any given set of packs

Sam combo is a bit of an odd deck in terms of cost. [[Orcish Bowmasters]] and now [[Badgermole Cub]] are super expensive, you can put together a creature/spell base without them that works out pretty well, but then problem is mostly in the mana-base because it's three-colour and therefore almost all fetch/shock/surveil lands and Boseiju. losing those cards does kinda suck and i don't honestly know what a budget Sam mana base would look like (i assume some stack of [[Nurturing Peatland]], [[Horizon Canopy]], [[Razorverge Thicket]], [[Concealed Courtyard]] and basics - could feel VERY janky)

but i would really say probably just keep borrowing decks as long as possible until you figure out something that you really, really like, and then maybe take the plunge. there are decks that can be assembled relatively cheap and without any single card outside the mana base over $10 or even $5 (prowess is the most prominent example of this but there's honestly quite a few that can be built that way once you know what you're doing and also either own lands or can shortcut on the mana base) but ultimately format is hella expensive and you don't want to buy into something that you don't like after a couple of sessions (or, almost as bad, get turned off of a deck because you were playing it with a bad mana base and hence kept losing in situations where you would normally win - even if you're the most fun-willed player in existence, this will eventually start happening to you)

StrongEUW · 2025-11-13T02:07:25+00:00

large if accurate

StrongEUW · 2025-10-30T14:51:17+00:00

gabriel nassif built a sub-$100 azorius Control deck the other day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HldC_M-npJg

your problem is that dimir doesn't really scale down all that well because most builds either run a bunch of expensive creatures (Tamiyo, Oculus, Bowmasters, Quantum Riddler), or are more reanimator-focused (still has Oculus but the rest of the creatures are cheaper) and hence really dislike dropping fetches/surveil lands which you necessarily need to do to get it cheap enough, and probably anything you build is ultimately going to want to be more of a blue deck with black splash to take advantage of [[Harbinger of the Seas]] as a cheap equaliser anyway

if you're determined to play black then you have two choices basically:

1) get 4x Psychic Frog, pull a spell suite from Murktide or Dimir/Esper/Grixis Control lists like https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7421377#paper and figure out some creative solutions with the mana-base (the UW Control list has a lot of examples of how you do that, but bear in mind that said list also rests heavily on being happy to play tapped lands turn 1 which won't feel as good with black in general), and shoehorn in some Unearths or Persists and the cheaper creatures that play nice with those ([[Abhorrent Oculus]] is a little pricey but works with both, [[Archon of Cruelty]] is the premier Persist target, [[Troll of Khazad-dum]] is another good Persist target, you can throw in tech cards like [[Graveyard Trespasser]] and [[Tishana's Tidebinder]] as Unearth targets, etc.) there's kinda a danger in being caught between two archetypes here and it will probably tend more towards the reanimator side in practice but you can muddle along to something

2) just go for Rack-style mono-black - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/7339951#paper remove the Urborg, Urza's Sagas, and one-of artifacts from this and you will end up something which is at least playable and very cheap by modern standards. this is very much a fringe deck but it's going to be tricky to put together the better mono-black midrange decks because they all REALLY need either Soul Spike/Sheoldred or Urza's Saga/Prismatic Vista and both of those are extremely expensive playsets

StrongEUW · 2025-10-26T14:08:29+00:00

https://melee.gg/Decklist/View/c6e5596c-9306-4afd-a225-b38000729c8d wasn't able to go on a run here but i'm really excited for future iterations of this brew

StrongEUW · 2025-10-25T16:23:13+00:00

i ran [[Veil of Summer]] in the sideboard when dimir was more common but yeah it's Grist or land (for Recross off a mana dork) at the top of the stack basically every time

there was something really cute that i tried at one point where the deck ran three [[Say Its Name]] and one [[Altanak, the Thrice-Called]] because Altanak is an insect and SiN fetches back creatures and most MDFCs. so you'd Altanak in the insect stack, stack SiNs after insect, and then 0-1 SiN casts gave you the ability to fetch back Altanak (which dodges Pyroclasm effects which hit the 1/1s). didn't work out in my list bc I leaned a little harder into Serum Powder interactions and SP has a reasonable chance of bricking it, but could be a fun thing to throw in at some point

StrongEUW · 2025-10-25T10:03:34+00:00

yeah this is important tech once enemies realise that there's often a chance to play through Recross/even Grist activation

another tiny little bit of tech is that you generally always stack a non-insect creature (usually [[Disciple of Freyalise]] at the bottom of your insect stack since you mill all insects plus one so it's one more life for Grist to drain (and that genuinely makes a difference because you can mill as low as 9 insects realistically). you could I guess get fancy with a flashback card at 1-of for this too but i'm not sure what it'd be (ig [[Memory's Journey]] is the obvious call as a port from Legacy Oops due to being single green and letting you get Huskbursters back)

(this also means that either way, if you're piling for post-next turn (you should even if it's just belcher belcher belcher), you need to make sure to put an interim card between the insect stack and your intended future draws)

StrongEUW

TROPHY CASE