Building Xavier Sal, Infested Captain in Commander

Posted on December 18, 2023

For what might be my last decklist column of 2023, I decided to take a crack at building around a nasty little pirate captain. He's a Human, but he's also a Pirate and... a Fungus? Yes, today's commander is a weird dude who is begging to be built in one of two directions.

This Sultai Human Fungus Pirate has a 3/3 body for 3 mana and has two tap abilities. He can tap to remove a counter from another permanent I control to populate. He can also tap to sacrifice another creature and proliferate. Both can only be done at sorcery speed, so there's no temptation to run an untapper like Seedborn Muse and try to use him on everyone else's turns.

In order to build Xavier Sal around his populate ability, I'd need to build around both a counter-based strategy and a token-based strategy. There's no reason that couldn't work beautifully, but it didn't feel right for Xavier's "Infested Captain" moniker. The ability to proliferate and his Fungus creature type is an invitation to run a bunch of Fungus creatures and use him to add spore counters, but I recently worked on The Mycotyrant and wanted to do something a little different.

A highly synergistic Fungus kindred list with Xavier Sal at the helm would probably be a ton of fun, but today I'm going to be focusing on proliferating something a little more deadly: poison counters!

Getting the Ball Rolling

My first step is a simple one. I need to make sure each of my tablemates has at least one poison counter. Proliferate can add counters to any number of permanents and/or players so if I can get everyone going at the same time it should be easier to kill the table.

Any time you play with using infect you're going to have tablemates that overreact. After all, it only takes 10 poison counters to kill someone in Magic.

Players often think infect is terribly overpowered but the bottom line is that infect decks don't generally win a lot of games. They often get ganged up on because they seem really scary to anyone who isn't very experienced with the game. That makes it harder to win games with an infect deck. It's not hard to kill a single player. Killing an entire table when everyone is working together to stop you is another thing entirely.

Whether it's going to be rough sledding or not, our first step is to get the ball rolling by giving each opponent at least one poison counter.

Prologue to Phyresis and Infectious Inquiry are a pair of card draw spells that just happen to give each of our opponents a poison counter. The former costs one and a Blue and is at instant speed. The latter is a sorcery that costs two and a Black, draws me two cards, and will have me lose 2 life. Any time you can mix a little extra card draw in with spells that do what your deck wants to do anyways, it's a no-brainer to run those cantrips in your list.

Removal is also a core part of good deckbuilding. Vraska's Fall will have each opponent sacrifice a creature or planeswalker and get a poison counter. Phyresis Outbreak is a Black sorcery that will have each opponent get a poison counter and then give their creatures -1/-1 until end of turn for each poison counter their controller has. That means it should scale with how your game is going. If you're in the early game you might just wipe out some tokens and small creatures. In the late game with opponents getting closer to 10 poison counters (which would kill them) it could wipe their entire board if they don't have big creatures on the field.

If you think it's hard to withstand having every one of your tablemates wanting to kill you first, you're not wrong. It's a challenge to be the archenemy, especially when you may not deserve that role. To help deal with that, I decided to run a slot of creatures with deathtouch in the list. Good players will understand they have to swing into them even at the cost of their best creature, but a surprising number of people will just leave you alone.

This deck is running an assortment of creatures with deathtouch and either reach or flying. I don't want to be vulnerable to decks built around flyers, and if I can get Fynn, the Fangbearer on the field, a Baleful Strix can turn into a way to give someone two more poison counters. Fynn effectively gives toxic 2 to my creatures with deathtouch. I'm also running a few creatures with infect and evasion. Blighted Agent is unblockable, but Viral Drake and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon can both fly over blockers to get some more poison counters onto my opponents.

My real goal is not to kill anyone with creatures that have infect, but the more poison counters I can pile up in the early and mid-game, the more likely it is that I'll be able to close the game out with proliferate triggers.

Drip Drip Drip

No, I'm not just quoting an obscure Chumbawamba song. My game plan is to slowly... or if things go well, quickly give my opponents additional poison counters until they're all dead. The fact that Xavier Sal, Infested Captain can tap to sacrifice a creature and proliferate means that if I have extra creatures I should be able to do that on each of my turns. Losing creatures often means losing blockers, so I'll need to be very careful to take the temperature of the table and figure out if I'm leaving myself too open.

To that end I'm running a handful of token generators. It's far from the level of token-making I'd do if this list was centered around my commander's populate ability, but it will be nice to have extra sac fodder lying around.

Curious Herd is a cute little card that can make a few Beast tokens, but has a very high ceiling. Against a cheerios (0-mana artifacts) list or a deck that churns out a ton of Treasures, Clues, and/or Food, you might just find yourself with an army big enough to swing for the win.

Biowaste Blob and Mitotic Ooze are a couple of token-making Oozes that I thought would be fun and fitting for this list. The former gives me a copy of Biowaste Blob on my upkeep. Those copies will have that same ability so I might be tempted to use Xavier to populate instead of proliferate. The latter is a 4/4 Ooze that will make two 2/2 Ooze tokens when it dies, and those will each make two 1/1 Ooze tokens when they die. Either of these creatures could keep me going with sac fodder for a while.

Scurry Oak and Herd Baloth are in this list. Both of these creatures will pop out a creature token whenever they get a +1/+1 counter. The former makes 1/1 Squirrels and the latter makes 4/4 Beast tokens. Scurry Oak has evolve, which means that whenever a creature enters the battlefield under my control with greater power or toughness, it will get a +1/+1 counter and then make a green Squirrel creature token. Both of these cards combo with Ivy Lane Denizen, because that Elf Warrior lets me put a +1/+1 counter on target creature whenever another green creature enters the battlefield under my control. I'm already playing with infect, so adding in a combo doesn't feel like a big deal.

I don't want to be dependent upon my commander for proliferate triggers, so I'm running a few other ways to proliferate. I've got some single-use proliferate cards like Pollenbright Druid and the cantrip Contentious Plan, but my best tools are the ones that can be used multiple times.

Contagion Clasp will let me pay four mana and tap it to proliferate. When it enters the battlefield I'll put a -1/-1 counter on target creature, so it can serve as a low-key removal option as well.

I should be able to get at least one landfall trigger each turn, so Evolution Sage should help me keep that drip, drip, drip of poison counters going. If I've got this and a land ramp spell in my opening hand I might even hold back the ramp to see if I can get some poison counters on my tablemates before I start putting extra lands into play.

Inexorable Tide might be the best noncreature proliferate card in the deck. It's an enchantment that will let me proliferate every time I cast a spell. This is far from being a storm deck but adding a few extra poison counters every turn will really put the pressure on my tablemates.

Flux Channeler isn't quite as good as Inexorable Tide, but this 2/2 Human Wizard will let me proliferate whenever I cast a noncreature spell. I've got a lot of creatures in today's list but it should still put in work.

The Viral Drake I mentioned earlier not only has flying and infect - it also has a four mana activated ability to proliferate. It's joined by Tainted Observer, a flying Phyrexian Bird with Toxic 1 that has a triggered ability. Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under my control I can pay 2 and proliferate.

The biggest threat in this build might be Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus. It's a flying Phyrexian Horror that will have me proliferate twice every time I proliferate. That might not seem like much, but you've probably noticed how heavily I'm leaning into running additional ways to proliferate. Now each of those will be putting in twice the work.

Eww Captain, My Captain

I've built and played a handful of infect decks and my favorites were always ones that used infect as the hammer to emphatically close out the game. Triumph of the Hordes is a reliable finisher in any combat-based deck that goes wide, and Chandra's Ignition has long been the "cherry on top" of some of my favorite and most convoluted Rube Goldberg style wincons.

Playing smaller creatures with infect is much harder in EDH, and I won't pretend that this deck is likely to be dominating an experienced playgroup, but I think it should be a fun and entertaining approach to making poison counters work in multiplayer. You'll have to fend off an entire table, but you should have a shot at getting the occasional win. With any luck you're not saddled with a playgroup that overreacts to poison or wants to "rule zero" it to 20 instead of 10. I prefer to play EDH by the rules and I encourage you and your playgroup to do the same.