Around a year ago my town got its own FNM for the first time. As might be expected it started out as a very aggro heavy metagame, including myself. After a few weeks of running my 16 land White Weenie deck (to great success!), I decided it was time to create something new.

I was pretty sure I wanted to play Infect, so began by throwing together a GB aggro deck… boring! I didn’t want to play aggro, but my deck must be able to beat it whilst also being able to infect a control deck early on and using proliferate to grind out the game.

Whilst looking through cards for ideas, one quickly jumped out at me. Throne of Geth. I instantly knew I wanted to be playing with this. Would it be possible to build a deck around it? I hoped so! Around this time I recall listening to a Pro player, Patrick Chapin I believe, talking about how good a card Ichor Wellspring is in sealed. And of course, it works well with the Throne too! So I decided to try this one out for myself.

The most important cards in the deck were of course going to be the creatures. Focussing on artifact dudes, Necropede and Ichorclaw Myr were obvious. But I really needed something to get a poison counter on asap. And then whilst flicking through my cards I saw Vector Asp, perfect! I know, Inkmoth Nexus existed.. but to begin with I wanted to stick to a tight budget (i.e spending £0).

So I now had my early game plan set out nicely. Drop an Asp, swing on T2 to get some poison in or trade, follow up with another creature. In the case of not being able to punch through I really wanted a guaranteed way to start the infection. Ichor Rats were added to the deck, but got cut when they started to prove a bit risky as opponents started proliferating me to death! I also tried Corpse Cur but found Core Prowler to be much better at 4 mana, doubly so with the Throne.

The final budget additions included Virulent Wound, Contagion Clasp and Tumble Magnet. The first was such an vital card to my strategy, being good against virtually every creature based deck I faced as key-creature removal whilst also getting the infection started early. The second added some more weenie-removal whilst also helping to grind out with proliferate late game. The third turned out to be a hugely important card. At the time, the strength of tumble magnet in constructed had not yet been widely realised, so I like to think of this as something I spotted early, backed up by the fact that once I started using it to good success it wasn’t long before I was seeing them in a number of my opponents decks.

And so, finally, to a decklist. This is the current version, but isn’t far from the list I had so much success with. I had a hard time thinking of a name, but asking on Twitter lead to a suggestion that I liked, and it stuck…

Toxic Rocks
Creatures:
4 Core Prowler
4 Ichorclaw Myr
4 Necropede
2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
4 Vector Asp

Spells:
4 Virulent Wound

Artifacts:
3 Contagion Clasp
4 Ichor Wellspring
2 Lux Cannon
4 Throne of Geth
3 Tumble Magnet

Land:
3 Inkmoth Nexus
20 Swamp

Once the deck showed to consistently perform well I managed to acquire the more expensive pieces, namely Inkmoths and Skithiryx. Lux Cannon is another incredible card, I’ve only ever lost one game once after resolving this card.

Toxic Rocks matched up fantastically against the Tempered Steel deck of the time, which was the other strongest deck in our local meta. I played the deck every week for a good few months with roughly 30% 1st and 30% 2nd place finishes, and never outside top 8.

I haven’t played the deck much recently since switching to Pod, but I did lend it to a friend a couple of months back who went on to win FNM losing only 1 game (so going 8-0-1 overall) all night. Personally, my best FNM victory with it was a 5-round FNM where I had to face the same Tempered Steel deck twice in a row, followed by Elves in the final.

This deck will always feel special to me. It is the first time that I’ve built a deck that truly felt like my own, from start to finish, and I think it defined a significant point for me as a player. Unlike with Pod, for which I designed my GB list before it got big, similar lists to Toxic Rocks never appeared at big name events and the fact it was so successful for me at FNM made it so much sweeter. Also I love the fact that its more than just an aggro or control deck, it has elements of both whilst also being a combo deck of sorts, and playing with it is probably the most fun I’ve ever had playing competitive magic.

I actually have the competitive history of the deck archived somewhere but its currently not accessible. Should I ever regain access to the info then I’ll write a follow-up article.

Hope you enjoyed reading about my deck and perhaps feel inspired to give it a go sometime. With the aggro heavy metagame we have at the moment it may even still prove to be a good choice competitively. Should you decide to test it out, please let me know how it goes

Ed