This seems like a very metagamed version of the deck, I can definitely see it if you believe you will face a ton of affinity, and its also solid vs pod. What I like about the deck is the fact it exists, and is well known because of Tom Ross. This is important, because it will make pod players less likely to jam turn 2 pod if they see turn 1 noble hierarch, out of fear of a turn 2 corruptor blowout. It also has dryad arbor, which means, if you play U/G infect, you have a much better shot at bluffing those dark confidants into not attacking, even if you are playing the arbor. Finally, it has pact of negation, which is a card thats pretty hard to play around, but if its on peoples radar they may take slightly worse lines to try and play around it.
how are you bluffing a dark confidant not into attacking? by running a dryad arbor? let alone why are you opening up your mana base to more gain for something like electrolyze? let alone bolt. dryad arbor isn't making sense to me.
are there and proven mono black lists or "established" lists out there?
my meta has a lot of pod, and blue white red control/ twin, which have hard match ups against discard decks.
i'm tempted to try to hybridize green and mono black. sacrificing the pump spells for discard spells. replacing pump with equipment
EDIT: Typo in my previous post, I meant to type 'aren't playing arbor'. It wasnt advocating playing dryad arbor at all. It was noting that the fact that other people play dryad arbor is good for the people that dont. Imagine you are playing against infect in a tournament as jund. You have a dark confidant you really need to live, and dont have an immediate answer to dryad arbor, do you attack into an uncracked fetch? You wont have your opponents decklist, are you willing the take the risk, knowing that the most popular Ug infect list runs dryad arbor? If I was playing in a large tournament, I might have tom ross poison counters or make some reference to him at the beginning of my match, and I would guess a reasonable percentage of my opponents would have some knowledge of some of his card choices. The fact you might not even have those cards doesnt matter if your opponent do
Even if you do 'hit' with needle, they can simply decay if they want to unlock lili, and you are using an artifact to pump their goyfs.
That abrupt decay is better used on a needle than a blighted agent or a Glistener swinging for lethal.
Baiting them to waste their answers on crap like dryad arbor , pithing needle or swinging into a fetched blocker isn't all that reliable as most people won't fall for it.
But if you swing with a dryad after they were playimg greedy ( bolt them selves with shocks and fetches over and over to kill off your infect creatures) they might forget you have a hand full of pump spells you are itching to get rid of and maybe that dyad can swing for lethal. It's a long shot and I think the price and drawbacks like having a much needed land for a quick kill bolted away will suck. You can tap it in response but still a land behind
I don't think they fear playing me or my deck, i think its more of a..i am sucking the fun out of their casual night with a not fun deck? I understand where they are coming from though. Im not a good magic player, my only experience with the game before this is playing as a kid during odyssey and not even by the proper rules with my friends. (dark ritual and fetch 3 swamps etc).
but anyways sorry for the tangent there.
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Liliana of the veil is starting to get annoying.
I have recently begun swapping 2 gitaxian probe for 2 pithing needle to stop that discard effect.
99% of the time she gets a decent pump. and she's quick too 1BB, what do you guys do to shut liliana down?
Also U/G guys, breeding pool is an auto include, but what about Gemstone mine over hiterland harbor? I found 2 copies in my binder from last year, Most games we play with these decks don't need to tap a single mana more than 3 times anyways right?
I got stupid lucky tonight, first round bye, went 2-1 then 2-0. Last round my opponent didn't want to play so he asked for an intentional draw. Which I agreed to, it gave him first and put me in second. No biggie. Was nice to get some credit last week I went 2-2 in modern and 0-4 in standard.
I'm starting to get harassed for running this deck at my store. (Insults, or calling me names behind my back or under their breath).
I'm generally a quiet dude, I only regularly talk to maybe 2 or 3 faces and spend most of my time being quiet in the store as my personality is reclusive.
I think I'm going to lay low and quit magic for a few weeks/ months as I felt pretty threatened ( these dudes were pretty big and young). So if anyone reads this, I just want to warn you about potential issues. You won't make friends in your meta with this deck.
Idk man Pro tour quals are pretty expensive to even just play in, that and if you win there is a lot of money to be spending on hotel accommodations, cuisine, and just general travel expenses since all wizards does is get you a one way coach ticket on American Airlines or something. I don't even think they give you the $25 for the bag check fee.
I think the iq's and smaller gp trials are where infect shines, smaller event, $25 to play in the super iq's and like $15-20 to play in the smaller ones, only 3-4 rounds and regional scene. But it's up to you really. I personally only play my deck in 3-4 round 16 mans with the same faces every week. Only a few of which can afford to spend the money to change up their deck every week or have more than 1 modern deck.
What else do you have aval to borrow? Do you have any tier 1 decks that maybe your friends have built and doing nothing over the weekend? I borrow scapeshift a lot from a local for "serious" events. Just because I can't afford anything more than my budget mono g infect deck, not that it's bad it's just not spectacular.
Tom ross wrote an scg article on that, he mb'd the corrupt ers becuase he kept having to kill his ichorclaws in his last deck. He main boarded the phytoburst becuase he couldn't find a copy of might of old krosa before the invitational qualifier event.
Once he qualified ( modern was the qualifier) he went on to take first in Columbus with a legacy deck that looks more like ours but of course legacy has the better dual lands, the berserk and the invigorate. Scg invitational events are standard and legacy with varying qualifier formats.
I play standard casually as well, I want to copy his red deck wins setup. Ultra_magnus, you're the only statistic for mtg goldfish. You know that? According to meta analysis mono green infect is so rare you're to only one brazen enough to play it in a daily. Looks like you went 2-4 in the one recorded event though, not bad for a budget deck. Congrats!
Meecht, you're taking ug infect to a PTQ?! Aren't they like $40 to enter? Can you borrow affinity for it or are you SOL? I belive that is the deck the pros use for quals. There are videos of melissa de tora taking first and the invite with affinity going as far back as 2012. Jon finkel also uses affinity when he borrows decks
Some people main board simic charm here locally. But most people had told me they like pumps in its place.
I don't remove a land for it, just 2 gitaxian probe for 2 ghost quarter (in my mind it's a removal spell that costs (1) that hits inkmoth, blinkmoth and even an annoying valakut.
mono-U tron is starting to kill me here, and my efforts of removing their win conditions are met with remands, or spell snares etc.
im thinking about removing the viridian corrupter and placing 2 krosan grip in place same CMC, it's not a creature but viridian isn't in there because he is a creature and it won't back hand me when my opponent has no artifacts (yet) and all I have is an ichorclaw on the field.
also, storm can't respond to it with the flurry of instants they throw before removing an active ascension.
also apperantly tomaharo saito ran infect during pro-tour born of the gods?
can someone find the decklist for that?
I play infect because im flat out poor thanks to student loans, but i'd still like to have A hobby kind of?
it's interesting to see players who make a living playing what is largely considered as a non-optimal coin flip of a budget deck.
it's like seeing terry Richardson shoot for vogue with a point and shoot then developing photos at Walmart rather than some sort of DSLR and off camera flash unit he probably has.
EDIT: I tried to play 2 events this week but they failed to fire.
Thursday night it was only me.
today was a Grand Prix Trial that as well only had me show up. It feels like modern is starting to die out in my particular area.
I've been finding that I seem to side in Sylvan Scrying for many match-ups, so I followed Drinkard's suggestion and replaced Necropede with 4 Sylvan Scrying. It was excellent, mainly I searched for Inkmoth Nexus, but in a couple of games I grabbed Pendelhaven instead. I even had a really strange win against Melira Pod, where I won the game without casting a pump spell or creature, just Sylvan Scrying and land. The only match that I missed Necropede was against a burn deck that was running Grim Lavamancer.
I have been bringing in Nature's Claim against this guy, since it is an enchantment creature.
Moving Sylvan Scrying to the main deck cleared up some sideboard space, so I added Back to Nature, which is for Bogle Auras, White Enchantment Control and the version of Blue Moon that runs both Blood Moon and Spreading Seas.
So I got second place on week, made a bunch of changes and then placed first last night.
Luck had mostly to do with it as my deck building skills are pathetic
I'm on mobile right now. So it won't be clean but:
2 cathedral of war
3 ink moth nexus
2 ghost quarter
13 forest
4 Glistener elf
4 blight mamba
4 ichorclaw myr
4 groundswell
4 might of old krosa
4 mutagenic growth
4 apostles blessing
4 vines of vastwood
4 rancor
4 gitxian probe
4-0'first place infect tonight, mono green.
Second place was u/g infect who was a better player than me but aided me in furthering my deck with advice. He went 3-1 his only loss being against me because I got 2 god hands in a row,
12 man tourney, a lot of skill at that tournament. I personally faced, Boris burn, g/r tron ( 2 very very skilled players) and one amazing infect player.
Among other types were full powered storm and full powered American control and robots
I play test the deck 10 -12 times a day every week. in addition to playing in 2 4 round events a week.
and I have found there are some instances where this happens.
I cut the pendlehaven completely. it's sub-optimal. too many draw backs, not only is it legendary like outlined above, it shows all your cards on the table, is too little too late and too easy to play around. and I can attribute probably most of my 2-2, and my 1-3 finishes to drawing it.
i saw a few posts that consider 2-2 as a decent/good finish i consider that a bad finish as you wasted your time and you didn't get store credit out of it. but that may just be a personal flaw of mine.
cathedral comes in tapped, loses synergy with pendlehaven
if they see you have a 1/2 pump on the field. a GOOD player is going to wait until you swing and that exalted trigger prevents you from using that pendlehaven in response to a clasm or some sort of suboptimal removal spell. tap that pendlehaven, then use the exalted trigger and you just blew a (G) on a +1/+2 instant basically. a vines unkicked would be more effective than a pendlehaven here.
the argument is that pendlehaven will push the last poison counter when you have 3 land on the field and spent 2 of them on 2 groundswell, or 2 might of old krosa...
cathedral is more than capable of doing this. but with the added benefit of combo'ing with providing 1 colorless WHILE providing the exalted trigger.
if you're running artifact creature heavy lists, a playset of inkmoth nexus and side board 2 dismember that colorless really counts.
i like cathedral over pendelhaven in mono green and in a blighted agent blue spalsh
@Horrible: yeah but the opportunity cost of running 1 Pendelhaven over, say, a Forest, is zero. It just adds an option, the option the hasten 2x your clock at the end of a game that would have went wrong and where you're left with little pump in hand. I been running 1 for a while, thinking of bumping up to two because I'm loosing nothing, and with 2 MB, I dont see the legendary rule conflict happen too often.
that's true, but i almost want to say cathedral is "better" especially if you're running an artifact heavy and full play list apostle's variant.
it's almost a shockland vs mana confluence choice.
you essentially have to "pay 1 mana each turn" to get that +1 trigger with a the added draw back of legendary supertype.
where with cathedral you only "pay 1 colorless" on the turn it comes in. if that makes any sense. Sort of how paying 2 on turn one for a shockland is cheaper than having to ping yourself 1 all game with a city of brass-fluence
in my extensive (100 hours or so) testing, cathedral always out performed pendle, my favorite play being tap cathedral, swing inkmoth for 2 vs games where i only had the pendlehaven and inkmoth swinging for 1.
and there were times where i drew a second pendelhaven which puts you a land behind (tap pendlehaven, activate inkmoth, play second pendlehaven, sac tapped pendlehaven tap for +1/+2) swing. where you could swing with 3 on a second cathedral draw.
when you compare it to a forest the pendlehaven is much better, but forests don't suffer from a blood moon (heavy side board option in storm) or that legend rule draw back. the new legend rule made pendlehaven a completely new card, whereas previously it was an easy cut.
iim waiting to play this deck and modify it next week.
but on the night i made the decision to go with cutting the pendlehaven from my deck i placed 2nd...that night, might just be a coincidence
Looking at these SCG IQ lists infect has been quietly stealing the local casual tournaments gearing up for the bigger events.
4 gitaxian probes are nice on game 1, after that i almost always board them out for something else.
for the dudes running 4 necropede....i find that necropede is my weakest creature, the extra -1/-1 does little to nothing when you LOSE a creature.
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also i cut pendlehaven, play testing over and over and over again revealed that a 1/1 with a +1/+2 does nothing with lightning bolt, or path to exile in the meta.
plus i never used the +1/+2 trigger i almost always had something better to spend my mana on, be it a vines of vastwood to hold next turn, a rancor on a ichorclaw or activating an inkmoth
the reality is that pendlehaven wasn't to useful for me. YMMV though.
also pendelhaven loses a lot of synergy with me, i main board 4 might of old krosa, 4 rancor and some cathedral of war. when it comes time to defend the life of a creature pendlehaven falls short, when it comes time to swing my creature is already looking a +4 mainphase 1 buff on him from might of old krosa where used the pendelhaven to pay for it.
it's too little too late. IMHO
also 4 in some of those lists is too many with the legendary land restriction.
i'd cut 2 pendelhaven, and 2 forest for 4 U/G shocks and blighted agent. if you really want utility from lands
then get those damn necropedes out of there and get some blighted agent. then run a few misty rainforests to fetch those lands. i like the idea of running dispel sideboard, mana leak usally kills me when facing UWR, more so than one might think (i want a turn 2 turn 3 win, a mana leak hurts)
Im going to play test with some surgical extraction for a few hours each day and see where i can get it.
this deck might be dead for me though, turns out in a pool of 8 players in my meta 2 newbies walked in holding almost the exact same deck as me....
meaning sideboard hate 3/10 dudes with the same deck = hate it out + the removal they already run in some of those decks (galvanic blasts, bolts, path to exile etc)
I like playing my premium deck foil slivers deck in between rounds, doesn't mean I'm going to top 8 a gap anytime soon with it.
No, no you won't. But piloting mono~green infect, you could most certainly place in the top 8. Hence the argument that the deck could be viable, as opposed to "premium deck foil slivers deck".
Premium deck is a magic brand name
Slivers was the name if the deck, foil is what the cards are.
So premium deck slivers all foil deck narrows it down to people who have been playing magic long enough to know what a premium deck is. I know you're a noob but damn, ***** the **** up kid.
My post pointed out the in effectiveness of your statement about it being fun to play casually.
Also you should calm down on these posts. 90% of it is just trash! slaughter horn can be countered! it can have the target switched! and it is not a good card for the deck. Neither is ghor clan or whatever standard trash you're trying to jam into a half baked infect deck to lower the price of a t2 dexk
What does your joy of playing this deck casually have to do with the argument of the decks viability? I like playing my premium deck foil slivers deck in between rounds, doesn't mean I'm going to top 8 a gap anytime soon with it.
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Sided in 2 gut shot and I put the pendelhavens back in, both of them.
That abrupt decay is better used on a needle than a blighted agent or a Glistener swinging for lethal.
Baiting them to waste their answers on crap like dryad arbor , pithing needle or swinging into a fetched blocker isn't all that reliable as most people won't fall for it.
But if you swing with a dryad after they were playimg greedy ( bolt them selves with shocks and fetches over and over to kill off your infect creatures) they might forget you have a hand full of pump spells you are itching to get rid of and maybe that dyad can swing for lethal. It's a long shot and I think the price and drawbacks like having a much needed land for a quick kill bolted away will suck. You can tap it in response but still a land behind
but anyways sorry for the tangent there.
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Liliana of the veil is starting to get annoying.
I have recently begun swapping 2 gitaxian probe for 2 pithing needle to stop that discard effect.
99% of the time she gets a decent pump. and she's quick too 1BB, what do you guys do to shut liliana down?
Also U/G guys, breeding pool is an auto include, but what about Gemstone mine over hiterland harbor? I found 2 copies in my binder from last year, Most games we play with these decks don't need to tap a single mana more than 3 times anyways right?
I'm starting to get harassed for running this deck at my store. (Insults, or calling me names behind my back or under their breath).
I'm generally a quiet dude, I only regularly talk to maybe 2 or 3 faces and spend most of my time being quiet in the store as my personality is reclusive.
I think I'm going to lay low and quit magic for a few weeks/ months as I felt pretty threatened ( these dudes were pretty big and young). So if anyone reads this, I just want to warn you about potential issues. You won't make friends in your meta with this deck.
I think the iq's and smaller gp trials are where infect shines, smaller event, $25 to play in the super iq's and like $15-20 to play in the smaller ones, only 3-4 rounds and regional scene. But it's up to you really. I personally only play my deck in 3-4 round 16 mans with the same faces every week. Only a few of which can afford to spend the money to change up their deck every week or have more than 1 modern deck.
What else do you have aval to borrow? Do you have any tier 1 decks that maybe your friends have built and doing nothing over the weekend? I borrow scapeshift a lot from a local for "serious" events. Just because I can't afford anything more than my budget mono g infect deck, not that it's bad it's just not spectacular.
Once he qualified ( modern was the qualifier) he went on to take first in Columbus with a legacy deck that looks more like ours but of course legacy has the better dual lands, the berserk and the invigorate. Scg invitational events are standard and legacy with varying qualifier formats.
I play standard casually as well, I want to copy his red deck wins setup. Ultra_magnus, you're the only statistic for mtg goldfish. You know that? According to meta analysis mono green infect is so rare you're to only one brazen enough to play it in a daily. Looks like you went 2-4 in the one recorded event though, not bad for a budget deck. Congrats!
Meecht, you're taking ug infect to a PTQ?! Aren't they like $40 to enter? Can you borrow affinity for it or are you SOL? I belive that is the deck the pros use for quals. There are videos of melissa de tora taking first and the invite with affinity going as far back as 2012. Jon finkel also uses affinity when he borrows decks
Some people main board simic charm here locally. But most people had told me they like pumps in its place.
I don't remove a land for it, just 2 gitaxian probe for 2 ghost quarter (in my mind it's a removal spell that costs (1) that hits inkmoth, blinkmoth and even an annoying valakut.
mono-U tron is starting to kill me here, and my efforts of removing their win conditions are met with remands, or spell snares etc.
im thinking about removing the viridian corrupter and placing 2 krosan grip in place same CMC, it's not a creature but viridian isn't in there because he is a creature and it won't back hand me when my opponent has no artifacts (yet) and all I have is an ichorclaw on the field.
also, storm can't respond to it with the flurry of instants they throw before removing an active ascension.
also apperantly tomaharo saito ran infect during pro-tour born of the gods?
can someone find the decklist for that?
I play infect because im flat out poor thanks to student loans, but i'd still like to have A hobby kind of?
it's interesting to see players who make a living playing what is largely considered as a non-optimal coin flip of a budget deck.
it's like seeing terry Richardson shoot for vogue with a point and shoot then developing photos at Walmart rather than some sort of DSLR and off camera flash unit he probably has.
EDIT: I tried to play 2 events this week but they failed to fire.
Thursday night it was only me.
today was a Grand Prix Trial that as well only had me show up. It feels like modern is starting to die out in my particular area.
So I got second place on week, made a bunch of changes and then placed first last night.
Luck had mostly to do with it as my deck building skills are pathetic
I'm on mobile right now. So it won't be clean but:
2 cathedral of war
3 ink moth nexus
2 ghost quarter
13 forest
4 Glistener elf
4 blight mamba
4 ichorclaw myr
4 groundswell
4 might of old krosa
4 mutagenic growth
4 apostles blessing
4 vines of vastwood
4 rancor
4 gitxian probe
-----
2 ghost quarter
1 pithing needle
2 dismember
1 relic of prognitus
2 dryad millitant
2 ranger's guile
2 natures claim
2 viridian corrupter
1 necropede
The sb looks weird becuase my meta is all over the place, don't copy my sb. Tailor one to suit your needs.
Second place was u/g infect who was a better player than me but aided me in furthering my deck with advice. He went 3-1 his only loss being against me because I got 2 god hands in a row,
12 man tourney, a lot of skill at that tournament. I personally faced, Boris burn, g/r tron ( 2 very very skilled players) and one amazing infect player.
Among other types were full powered storm and full powered American control and robots
and I have found there are some instances where this happens.
I cut the pendlehaven completely. it's sub-optimal. too many draw backs, not only is it legendary like outlined above, it shows all your cards on the table, is too little too late and too easy to play around. and I can attribute probably most of my 2-2, and my 1-3 finishes to drawing it.
i saw a few posts that consider 2-2 as a decent/good finish i consider that a bad finish as you wasted your time and you didn't get store credit out of it. but that may just be a personal flaw of mine.
cathedral comes in tapped, loses synergy with pendlehaven
if they see you have a 1/2 pump on the field. a GOOD player is going to wait until you swing and that exalted trigger prevents you from using that pendlehaven in response to a clasm or some sort of suboptimal removal spell. tap that pendlehaven, then use the exalted trigger and you just blew a (G) on a +1/+2 instant basically. a vines unkicked would be more effective than a pendlehaven here.
the argument is that pendlehaven will push the last poison counter when you have 3 land on the field and spent 2 of them on 2 groundswell, or 2 might of old krosa...
cathedral is more than capable of doing this. but with the added benefit of combo'ing with providing 1 colorless WHILE providing the exalted trigger.
if you're running artifact creature heavy lists, a playset of inkmoth nexus and side board 2 dismember that colorless really counts.
i like cathedral over pendelhaven in mono green and in a blighted agent blue spalsh
that's true, but i almost want to say cathedral is "better" especially if you're running an artifact heavy and full play list apostle's variant.
it's almost a shockland vs mana confluence choice.
you essentially have to "pay 1 mana each turn" to get that +1 trigger with a the added draw back of legendary supertype.
where with cathedral you only "pay 1 colorless" on the turn it comes in. if that makes any sense. Sort of how paying 2 on turn one for a shockland is cheaper than having to ping yourself 1 all game with a city of brass-fluence
in my extensive (100 hours or so) testing, cathedral always out performed pendle, my favorite play being tap cathedral, swing inkmoth for 2 vs games where i only had the pendlehaven and inkmoth swinging for 1.
and there were times where i drew a second pendelhaven which puts you a land behind (tap pendlehaven, activate inkmoth, play second pendlehaven, sac tapped pendlehaven tap for +1/+2) swing. where you could swing with 3 on a second cathedral draw.
when you compare it to a forest the pendlehaven is much better, but forests don't suffer from a blood moon (heavy side board option in storm) or that legend rule draw back. the new legend rule made pendlehaven a completely new card, whereas previously it was an easy cut.
iim waiting to play this deck and modify it next week.
but on the night i made the decision to go with cutting the pendlehaven from my deck i placed 2nd...that night, might just be a coincidence
4 gitaxian probes are nice on game 1, after that i almost always board them out for something else.
for the dudes running 4 necropede....i find that necropede is my weakest creature, the extra -1/-1 does little to nothing when you LOSE a creature.
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also i cut pendlehaven, play testing over and over and over again revealed that a 1/1 with a +1/+2 does nothing with lightning bolt, or path to exile in the meta.
plus i never used the +1/+2 trigger i almost always had something better to spend my mana on, be it a vines of vastwood to hold next turn, a rancor on a ichorclaw or activating an inkmoth
the reality is that pendlehaven wasn't to useful for me. YMMV though.
also pendelhaven loses a lot of synergy with me, i main board 4 might of old krosa, 4 rancor and some cathedral of war. when it comes time to defend the life of a creature pendlehaven falls short, when it comes time to swing my creature is already looking a +4 mainphase 1 buff on him from might of old krosa where used the pendelhaven to pay for it.
it's too little too late. IMHO
also 4 in some of those lists is too many with the legendary land restriction.
i'd cut 2 pendelhaven, and 2 forest for 4 U/G shocks and blighted agent. if you really want utility from lands
then get those damn necropedes out of there and get some blighted agent. then run a few misty rainforests to fetch those lands. i like the idea of running dispel sideboard, mana leak usally kills me when facing UWR, more so than one might think (i want a turn 2 turn 3 win, a mana leak hurts)
Im going to play test with some surgical extraction for a few hours each day and see where i can get it.
this deck might be dead for me though, turns out in a pool of 8 players in my meta 2 newbies walked in holding almost the exact same deck as me....
meaning sideboard hate 3/10 dudes with the same deck = hate it out + the removal they already run in some of those decks (galvanic blasts, bolts, path to exile etc)
Warning for spamming
-ktkenshinx-
Premium deck is a magic brand name
Slivers was the name if the deck, foil is what the cards are.
So premium deck slivers all foil deck narrows it down to people who have been playing magic long enough to know what a premium deck is. I know you're a noob but damn, ***** the **** up kid.
My post pointed out the in effectiveness of your statement about it being fun to play casually.
Also you should calm down on these posts. 90% of it is just trash! slaughter horn can be countered! it can have the target switched! and it is not a good card for the deck. Neither is ghor clan or whatever standard trash you're trying to jam into a half baked infect deck to lower the price of a t2 dexk