Infest MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: With Infest, you can deal with multiple creatures at once, potentially clearing the opponent’s board. This card can shift the numbers on the field in your favor, effectively offering a form of card advantage as it can eliminate several of an opponent’s cards with just one of yours.

Resource Acceleration: Though Infest itself doesn’t directly provide resource acceleration, it enables you to disrupt your adversary’s pace. By removing a number of creatures, you’re slowing down their ability to build up their field presence, which in turn impedes their resource acceleration, giving you an indirect advantage.

Instant Speed: As a sorcery, Infest requires strategic planning; it allows you to set up your turn with the certainty that your opponent will face a cleared board, or following your opponent’s turn, to reset the field. This can be crucial for dictating the tempo of the match, ensuring that you capitalize on its sweeping effect at the moment that best disrupts your opponent’s strategy.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Playing Infest requires a setup where you benefit from nonselective creature removal, which can be limiting in multi-creature strategy games. Additionally, it doesn’t discriminate between your creatures and your opponents’, potentially disrupting your board presence as well.

Specific Mana Cost: Infest necessitates precise mana allocation with its black mana cost, potentially restricting its inclusion exclusively to mono-black or black-dominant decks and thereby reducing its versatility across various archetypes.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: At three mana, Infest’s utility competes with other board sweepers and removal spells. Considering this, players might find other alternatives that offer more targeted or extensive creature control, which may dilute Infest’s appeal in deck building.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Infest is a useful card for any collection due to its ability to clear the battlefield of smaller creatures, making it a fit for decks that need to manage opponent’s early game aggro or token strategies.

Combo Potential: This card can synergize with strategies that profit from death triggers, such as triggering morbid abilities or adding value to graveyard-based mechanics.

Meta-Relevance: In environments dominated by swarm strategies, Infest rises in value as an efficient means of resetting the board, keeping the pace in favor of control or attrition decks.

How to beat

Infest is known for its sweeping impact on the battlefield, capable of clearing out numerous creatures with just one spell. A black sorcery card, it deals two damage to each creature, which can be devastating to decks that rely on a swarm of low-toughness creatures. When facing an opponent with Infest, the strategy shifts to resilience.

One effective countermeasure is to deploy creatures with toughness greater than two. This simple approach ensures that your creatures can withstand the damage from Infest, preserving your board presence. Another strategy involves utilizing indestructible creatures, as they are immune to any damage dealt, which includes the sweeping effect of Infest.

Counterspells are also a valuable tool to keep in your arsenal when going up against black decks that may cast Infest. By holding up mana for a well-timed counterspell, you can prevent Infest from resolving and protect your creature-based strategy. Additionally, using instant-speed creature buffs in response to Infest’s casting can save your creatures and possibly leave your opponent at a disadvantage, having wasted a valuable removal spell.

Ultimately, by anticipating Infest and preparing your deck with these tactics, you can maintain control of the board and minimize the impact of this potent MTG card.