Deckbuilder's Challenge XI: I am not Left-Landed!

{Decklist}
Manabase
4 Chancellor of the Tangle
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Lotus Petal

Infect Package
4 Glistener Elf
3 Ichorclaw Myr
4 Apex of Power
4 Blazing Shoal
1 Myojin of Infinite Rage


0 Mana Card Advantage
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Street Wraith
4 Sphinx of Foresight

Rituals/Pseudo Rituals
4 Wild Cantor
4 Rite of Flame
4 Manamorphose

Removal
4 Gut Shot

{Breakdown}

Why Infect?
Typically, the decks I created prior to this one ended up falling under one of two types:

- A very low-curve Naya Stompy or WG Weenie deck that tried to stick a Noble Hierach that would then try to spam efficient one-drops like Savannah Lions and Skymarcher Aspirant. One problem with this deck is that it often couldn't take full advantage of the mana provided by Simian Spirit Guide which is basically like saying we had to throw out 4 of our lands in a deck for Wastes when mana is already tight. Another is that with the struggle to even get to 2 mana, we would have a hard time stacking cards like Honor of the Pure or even casting things like Lightning Bolt to keep our momentum going into the lategame. Overall, there were a lot of ways to make the deck consistent, but it didn't have much (if any) staying power.

- An affinity deck spamming every 0-mana artifact we could find from Mox Amber to Welding Jar to power out a lot of Myr Enforcer and Mycosynth Golem. The problem here is that while the threats are efficient and potentially even free, they're very slow to reach that state and things like Mishra's Bauble for card draw or Salvage Titan as an alternate plan of attack require us to sacrifice artifacts meant we ended up with two different gameplans in our deck that didn't compliment each other. In other words, we had a lot of great threats, but our supporting gameplan to back it up either took too long or often risked messing itself up.

Infect eliminates both of these problems by guaranteeing that sticking a "small" Glistener Elf or a Ichorclaw Myr is part of our win condition. We are a "sink or swim" deck using Blazing Shoal to attack for 10 infect and blow the opponent out on turn 2 or 3, so running into the long game where we don't have any mana isn't really a concern for us because if we got to turn 3 or 4, we're probably dead to begin with. The deck's goal is thus to get the ideal hand of Glistener Elf + Blazing Shoal + a 10 CMC red card as fast possible. If we're expecting a small creature to come down and try to chump us out, we hope for Gut Shots to appear in our hand to clear the way.


Card 'Draw'


Gitaxian Probe and Street Wraith are pretty self-explanatory here - we virtually cut our deck down to 52 cards so we can ensure the pieces we want are more likely to appear in our hand. Of particular note however is Sphinx of Foresight - while not a draw spell per se, we are looking to ensure even our turn 2 draw is as relevant as possible to the situation at hand. If that can help us clear away 3 or even 6 useless mana sources or redunant pieces to sculpt our winning hand, it can work just as good as if if not better than a proper draw spell. There is also a corner case where if we end up with a hand full of fast mana/rituals and Manamorphose, we can use all of it to slam the Sphinx down on turn 1 and hope it is a sufficient clock to beat the opponent.


Rituals/Pseudo Rituals


We run Wild Cantor for one very important reason here over Noble Hiearch or Birds of Paradise - specifically, that it can be played with . Since our best shot revolves around sticking a Glistener Elf, we want to minimize the cases in which we draw an Elf and a mana source that can't play it. Wild Cantor helps with this by giving a Simian Spirit Guide a chance to play the Elf where other mana dorks would have to wait a turn or not be compatible with Spirit Guide.

As mentioned above, Manamorphose helps us fix our mana to hardcast our non-infect 'threats' providing utility for us in a pinch. It also works as a card draw spell, helping us dig just one card deeper for that perfect combo piece we might need. I've chosen to run Rite of Flame in this build over Dark Ritual despite the slightly increased risk for an important reason - it helps us hardcast our Blazing Shoal fodder cards if we whiff and can't find our combo hand. Apex of Power was my card of choice because it effectively turns into a card that lets us 'draw' 7 and cast any of the desired cards from the pile with its mana refund. In other words, if this deck somehow manages to 'storm' into it via ritual critical mass, we may very well be able to brute force our way through the opponent by dropping creatures far above what they can play on turn 1 - creatures like Chancellor of the Tangle and Sphnix of Foresight that were pulling double-duty as our opening hand utility cards, no less. A single Myojin of Infinite Rage is in here mainly to up the Shoal fodder count as a bit and doubt as an alternative payoff - while normally he would be ridiculously expensive by our standards, dropping a 7/4 indestructible creature on turn 1 or 2 is still a very credible threat.

Ultimately, this is a deck that includes a lot of ways to try and win on turns 1-3. It just happens to rely on the same 'support package' of cards to power into all of them. If you haven't guessed already from this writeup, though, you're pretty much on "all or nothing" with this deck; you'll entire completely the smash the opponent out of nowhere or encounter another flop where you didn't play much of anything. May your all or nothing charges yield glory against your foes!