Legacy Infect [Masters 7.8.18]

Hey everybody!
This is TallSharkandHandsome. You may have seen me commenting on reddit or discord under the same name.
On July 8th I made masters again with this Hooru Berserk deck, which I lovingly call Legacy Infect in homage to the Magic the Gathering deck that shares many similarities. (It's also blue and green, and tries to deal tons of surprise damage with pump spells)

Let's start off with the basic idea of the deck.

We want to give our units berserk, get them through the opponent's defensive line, and buff them with some fast pump spells to deal maximum damage to the opponent's face. Pretty simple.

Dusk Raider gives every unit you draw Berserk. This guy seems innocuous because it's usually not the endgame unit that actually beats the opponent's face in, but it plays a super important role in the deck. It draws you extra cards off its Nightfall trigger, and it gives your beefy boys berserk.

Speaking of, let's talk about the three beefy boys: We've got Rilgon's Disciple, Kosul Battlemage, and Geomar, the Steel Tempest. Each of these units get a temporary bonus when you play a spell.
- Rilgon's Disciple gets Double Damage
- Kosul Battlemage gets +1/+1 until the end of turn
- Geomar, the Steel Tempest, gets +2/+2 and lifelink until end of turn.

These three beefy boys are the ones you want to give berserk to so you can pump them up and hit your opponent hard. Twice.

Rounding out the curve, we have Hooru Pacifier and Valkyrie Enforcer, as well as our Market enabler, Jennev Merchant.
- Hooru Pacifier. Weapons cannot be played. This stops Auric Runehammer, Sword of Icaria, and Rakano Plate just to name a few. It also is a pretty decent unit to buff if you don't have a beefy boy left. The overwhelm can basically just ignore any chump blocker they throw in the way of him.
- Valkyrie Enforcer does double duty here. Not only is it a mid-sized flyer that can sometimes just chip away at the opponent's life total, but it also stops Sandstorm Titan. In addition to stopping Sandstorm Titan, it can also silence Sandstorm Titan. Did I mention that this deck really needs to answer Sandstorm Titans? All joking aside, if your opponent is not playing Sandstorm Titan, this can drop a flyer to the ground, letting you Levitate your beefy boy over their blockers.
- Jennev Merchant gives us access to the specifically chosen cards in the Market, in exchange for a not-as-useful card from our hand. I'll get into this a little later. He also gums up the ground, and his Aegis makes him stick around after a Harsh Rule.

Now let's talk about the removal suite. It's kind of small, but our pump spells can also double as removal if absolutely necessary.
- Permafrost stops other fliers, Teacher of Humilitys, and Dawnwalkers really well. It can also pop aegis on things like Throne Warden or Vadius, Clan Father.
- Vanquish is mostly to stop Sandstorm Titan, but it can also take out Rizahn, Greatbow Master or Icaria, the Liberatorif you can pop the aegis first. It's a pretty great catch-all for the problematic units for this deck.

Now onto our spells that buff our beefy boys.
- Finest Hour is the best pump spell available. It's the Torch of Justice. Finest Hour can also pop aegis if need be. It gives Geomar, the Steel Tempest +5/+5 and Lifesteal for 1 power. How busted is that?
- Gift of Battle gives any unit berserk, letting them attack twice. This is really useful if you don't happen to get Dusk Raider on turn 2. It also happens to be a spell, which buffs your beefy boys.
- Levitate primarily will be used to hop your beefy boy over their defensive line and smash your opponent's face in. Again, this can pop aegis when the need arises, but it also draws you a card. The only other extra card draw in the deck is the nightfall trigger from Dusk Raider, (and the market swap with Jennev Merchant, technically draws you that card, yes).
- Sharpened Reflexs really surprised me. The scout is important to fix your draws, but the +1/+1 being permanent is really what makes this card great. This was almost Jump Kick, but I think the scout and permanence of Sharpened Reflex is better.
- Saddle Up is new from Set 4, and gives +4/+4 for 3 power. This is a little high on our curve (which stops abruptly at 4) so we only want 2 of them.
- Crownwatch Standard also transforms into a 2 cost Finest Hour that also gives Lifesteal. This power is incredible, but it's also relatively hard to play. My rule of thumb is if this is my 5th power, I will hold it unless my hand has a ton of other action. If it would be my 4th power, I'd rather play it and play Geomar, the Steel Tempest on time than hold it to be a spell later. However, if your hand has nothing else, you may want to hold it. Every situation is different.

For our power base, you'll notice I'm not using Crests. This deck REALLY doesn't want its power to come down depleted. Banners get played on Turn 1, and then undepleted power turn 2 or 3 to play a unit. Cobalt Waystone gives you face aegis, which stops burn from stealing the last few points of damage, as well as stopping Sabotage, Rain of Frogs, Disciplinary Weights, and Azindel's Gift later in the game. Azindel's Gift is especially important to look out for; we generally hold all of our tricks up our sleeve until the coast is clear. If they Gift us, we don't get to do that anymore, and we generally have to go off the next turn if possible.

Now, as for that market. Jennev Merchant allows you to swap a card in your hand for a primal card in your market. Lets look at our choices.

Substitute - Have I mentioned Sandstorm Titan enough yet in this writeup? That's what this is for. There was some talk in the comments about playing Unstable Form because it transforms the titan as well as having echo to give you additional spell triggers, but I would rather KNOW that the Titan is going to be a 3/3 dinosaur when I attack.
Did you know that there are exactly 100 units that cost 5 right now? Did you know that 20 of those have Flying, with a few more that could if conditions are right? Playing Unstable Form on a Sandstorm Titan has a 1 in 5 chance of giving your opponent a flying blocker anyway. If you use the other Unstable Form to bring it up to a 6-cost unit, there are again 20 of those with flying, out of 76 possible 6-cost units, this turns into an almost 1 in 4 chance. So Noodlez113, if you're reading this, Substitute is better than Unstable Form for this deck.

Savage Denial - The only weakness this deck really has is to fast spells. Torch, Annihilate, Equivocate, these all let our opponents deal with our creatures after we've committed at least 1 spell to them. Savage Denial stops these fast spells. I've tried Backlash here to stop Harsh Rule as well, but we don't have as big of a problem with that if we're playing correctly. Don't overextend, and go off when they have used all their power or you know they don't have a fast spell to stop you. Savage Denial costing 1 vs Backlash costing 2 is also a key point in this decision. You don't usually have extra power to play with on the turn you attack.

Gift of Battle - Berserk is very important to our plan, and having 4 Dusk Raiders, 3 Gift of Battles, and 4 Jennev Merchants that can get you another copy of Gift of Battle makes it much easier to achieve. Sometimes I wish there was a pump spell in the market instead of this, but often Gift is the right card here. Maybe I'll try Jump Kick, but not over Gift.

Lightning Storm - This helps a lot in the Skycrag Aggro, Grenadin, Praxis Tokens, and other aggressive, go-wide decks. Also, the only creatures on your side with 2 defense that die to this are Jennev Merchant and Dusk Raider. (Geomar, the Steel Tempest is a 3/2, but it gets +2/+2 when you play the spell.) By the time you need Lightning Storm, you shouldn't need Dusk Raider or Jennev Merchant anyway.

Crystallize - This card is really good at buying extra turns against Time Fatties. It can also simply clear the way for an attack, however it costs a lot so your may not get as many pumps in. This is the one spot that might be better off as Jump Kick. I may test this in the future.