Infect them All!
Art:Skrelv, Defector Mite
by Brian Valeza
Welcome to another Installment of Brewed EDH!
Todays Featured Commander is:
Mono-White is widely considered one of the weakest mono colors in all of EDH, Skrelv helps to break that stigma if only by a little bit. Skrelv is an incredibly fun to play commander and a lot of opponents will underestimate him when sitting down at a table, while he may be often underestimated he is pretty powerful and very fun to pilot!
The Deck:
Skrelv Toxic!
Why Skrelv, Defector Mite?
We chose Skrelv because he is by far the best and in my opinion one of the few options for a good Mono-White infect commander. He is super easy to cast and very easy to get an easy poison counter on an opponent very early. Due to his cheap cost he is also super easy to recast for most of the early turns, his ability is also great to give our other creatures toxic and give them protection from a color of our choice. Skrelv is one of our best pieces of evasion so we can get in and start giving poison counters to our opponents! Overall Skrelv is a great card that will allow us to start putting poison counters early so that we can proliferate later in the game!
Deck Overview:
Our deck is all about attacking early and ending the 10 life game with poison counters, we have many ways to increase counters mostly coming from our creatures and by proliferating counters on our opponents!
Our creature package is full to the brim with toxic and infect creatures that we can use to end the game quickly we are also packing creatures that help with protection and evasion as well as buffing our toxic creatures. One of our best creatures for buffs is Porcelain Zealot
which can buff any of our creatures but also gives us an extra buff to creatures with toxic. Flensing Raptor
is great piece of evasion and buff since we can buff a toxic creature / give it flying until the end of the turn. Our creature package is all about committing as many toxic permanents as early as we can in testing we can have 3 – 5 poison counters on any given opponent by as early as turn 4 and then we can start proliferating it is very easy to eliminate opponents with this deck! Pretty much all of our creatures have either toxic or infect or allows us to proliferate! Selfless Spirit
is a great way for us to protect our creatures and also has the benefit of being able to come down very early! We have a ton of cheap creatures but also have a very good top end which is highlighted by Blightsteel Colossus
and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
both of these cards can be game enders on there own. Since we have a lot of cards that produce tokens we also have Mondrak, Glory Dominus
which is a great way for us to creature more mites and any tokens that we have! Another card I want to highlight is Norn's Choirmaster
which proliferates when a commander enters the battlefield or attacks, since we have Skrelv it is very easy to trigger this! Toxic creatures are great but we also have some normal infect creatures like Phyrexian Juggernaut
, Ichorclaw Myr
and Priests of Norn
. Infect is better than toxic especially when it comes to buffs, so our early infect creatures allow us to start giving a ton of poison counters to our opponents pretty early!
Our planeswalker package is pretty small but both planeswalkers are very good. The Wandering Emperor
is great because we can cast her at instant speed and exile an attacking creature, we can also buff one of our creatures and give them first strike as well as create a token if we need it. Wandering Emperor is a great toolbox planeswalker who can let us be both offensive and defensive! Our other planeswalker is The Eternal Wanderer
is mostly a great board wipe for us with her -4 ability and in testing is the primary way that we utilize her. Blinking Skrelv or another creature to trigger our other cards that care about creature ETB, Wanderer can also make double strike 2/2’s.
Our spell package is full of destruction spells some “counterspells” and combat trick spells. One of our “counterspells” is Reprieve
which is a basically a Remand
in white. In testing I have found that reprieve is really good early and late and forcing opponents to spend all of their mana + draw a card is just a great effect! Akroma's Will
is one of our best combat tricks and helps make our toxic creatures even more evasive and give a bunch of poison counters to our opponents. Flawless Maneuver
and Unbreakable Formation
are both great ways to protect our creatures in the face of board wipes / destruction effects! Speaking of board wipes we have some of those too Dusk // Dawn and Farewell
these are great if we fall behind and farewell is especially good since it can hit a very wide range of permanents! For our destruction spells we are playing both Generous Gift
and Path to Exile
which are both quick ways to take out problematic permanents.
Our artifact package is full of mana rocks and proliferation effects, both of which help us to end games quicker. For our proliferation we have Staff of Compleation
which is mostly used for proliferating but we also use it draw cards since it is not easy to draw cards in mono-white. We also use Contagion Engine
which will allow us to proliferate twice for only 4 mana! As far as our mana rocks go we also have staples like Sol Ring
, Arcane Signet
and Glistening Sphere
which is the best of both worlds as a mana rocks that also proliferates on ETB. We are utilizing a decent amount of evasion and we do have Norn's Annex
which is great for making it a pain to attack us. For our offensive we have Sword of Truth and Justice
and Sword of Sinew and Steel
Truth and Justice buffs and proliferates and Sinew and Steel allows us to destroy artifacts / planeswalker. The top end of our artifact curve is Akroma's Memorial
which is really a game ender, by the time we can cast it which is typically by turn 4 or 5 we can just start one combat eliminating our opponents!
Our enchantment package is full of ways to protect us, buff our creatures and give our opponents more poison counters! For protection we have Ghostly Prison
and Sphere of Safety
which are both great ways to prevent our opponents from attacking us. Since outside of artifacts we have no way to ramp we also have Land Tax
which is a great way to grab a bunch of lands / thin out our deck! One of our most impactful enchantments is Norn's Decree
which allows our opponents to get poison counters when the successfully deal damage to us with one of their creatures. Anointed Procession
is another great way for us to produce a ton of creatures and is another copy of Mondrak!
Our land base is overall pretty basic with the majority of it being plains, but all of of our non-basic lands are very impactful to the gameplan. To start we have Inkmoth Nexus
which can be a great creature to animate and put a buff on to finish out a game. Another very impactful land is Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
which is a great way to generate a ton of mana since we are a mono white deck! Karn's Bastion
is a great way for us to proliferate which is always good for us! Mirrex
basically can produce mini-skrelv’s and is great with Mondrak or Anointed Procession!
Strengths of the Deck:
- 10 Life Games
- Decent amount of interaction
- Many ways to proliferate poison counters
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Same weaknesses of many Mono-White strategies
- Weak to control strategies
- Weak to creature hate
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Main Win Conditions:
Our main win condition is typically just killing our opponents through poison counters, we have no real combos to win the game just consistent attacks / buffs and getting with our toxic creatures and making them more evasive!
Conclusion:
In conclusion Skrelv is a really fun infect commander in a very suprising color scheme. Even though mono-white is not the strongest color in commander Skrelv is still very powerful and a ton of fun to play! Skrelv can come down very early and begin the poison counters very early in the game and with our proliferation effects can make games end very quickly. Overall Skrelv is a very interesting mono-white commander and is a ton of fun to play!
Thanks for reading to the end!