Corrupting Influence Upgrade Guide

Hello, friend! Do you want to make your Corrupting Influence deck better and more fun? That’s great because in this Corrupting Influence Upgrade Guide I’ll explain how to do so. You’ll find some great suggestions for every kind of budget – there’s no need to spend a lot of money to improve this precon.

Before We Start

Before we start the deep dive into upgrading this deck, I wanted to mention a few things. I tried to write this article in a way, that even MTG beginners will have a good understanding of it. Nevertheless, if you’re a more enfranchised player, you’ll also be able to take a lot of good ideas from this article. Maybe you’ll find that I explain some term that, you’re already familiar with, but the cards I recommend will be good for any type of player.

Article Breakdown

The article will be broken down into four main parts. First up, I’ll recommend you the three best cards that you can add to the deck to immediately improve it. Upgrading a deck can be a daunting task, especially if you’re a new player. That’s why this section is there, so you can start upgrading the deck step by step. There’s no need to do everything all at once.

Next up, there’s a Corrupting Influence budget upgrade. For this part, I consider the cards that can won’t make a hole in your wallet. Some of them are quite good, and should be included in the final version of this deck, despite their low price.

Afterward, we throw our budget out of the window. In that section, I include the more expensive cards for the precon.

Finally, I’ll talk about which cards to remove from the deck, and how to make this decision yourself.

Get the Deck

If you don’t already own the Corrupting Influence precon, you can buy one on Amazon. Besides the 100-card ready-to-play deck, you’ll also get a special Sample Collector booster, which contains two exciting cards.

Corrupting Influence Decklist

One final thing before we start upgrading the deck. Let’s take a look at the Corrupting Influence decklist:

Some cards weren’t added to the database yet. You can find them in All Will Be One Commander Deck Guide.

How to Upgrade Corrupting Influence?

So, how does one start upgrading a Commander precon? The best way to do so is by maximizing the synergies with its commander. Ixhel rewards you if you give your opponents at least three poison counters. That’s why your main goal is to quickly reach that, then proceed by stealing your opponents’ cards, and eventually winning by either regular damage or by getting everyone else to ten poison counters.

Therefore, I think that the cards this deck needs can be divided into four big groups:

• Ways to give your opponent poison counters.
• Proliferate effects (adding more poison counters to players who already have them).
• Good cards, that stand on their own.
• Better mana base.

With that said, let’s start by finding the cards, which will help us reach our goals.

Top 3 Cards to Upgrade Corrupting Influence

As I mentioned before, we’re starting with the three best cards to quickly upgrade your Corrupting Influence deck with. For this selection, I didn’t pay that much attention to their budget, I only excluded some of the most expensive cards.

White Sun’s Twilight

We’re starting with a card that’s from the Phyrexia: All Will Be One set. Through the article, you’ll find that I’m recommending multiple cards from this set, but this one is my favorite.

Most of the time you’ll be casting this with X being 5 or more. This way you’ll wipe the board and get a bunch of Mites with toxic. This will put you far ahead in most scenarios, and enable you to start poisoning your opponents once again. If you’re already winning the game, you can either cast this for X=4, or you simply wait for a better opportunity.

The beauty of this card is that it’s at its best when you’re losing, and that’s when it’s incredible important to have a card like this.

Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon

This is one of the biggest infect creatures that’s missing from the deck. Skithiryx packs a big punch. It can deal 4 poison damage out of nowhere, immediately turning out corrupted, or possibly even taking a player out. On top of that, it also has a built-in protection, which can come in handy.

Contagion Engine

This card isn’t the most mana efficient, but if you want to consistently proliferate, this is one of the best ways of doing so. If your opponents don’t deal with it, this will win you the game in a few turns.

Corrupting Influence Upgrade – Budget

As I’ve mentioned before, in this section I’ll discuss cards that will improve your deck, but won’t be too expensive. Keep in mind that the prices of cards can change. If you’re reading this a long time after the article was published, some of these might no longer be that cheap.

More Poison

Not all the creatures in your deck will have infect. Some will be included because they have toxic, or are simply good cards in this strategy. That’s why you can attack with one such creature, and if your opponent doesn’t block, you play Tainted Strike on it. They can lose the game out of nowhere, or you can at least get to the corrupted clause.

It doesn’t even have to be your creature! When your opponent is attacking one of your other opponents, you can do the same with one of their creatures. (One fringe scenario is to use it when an opponent is attacking you for lethal, so you don’t take damage but just poison counters, which probably won’t matter.)

Flesh-Eater Imp can be responsible for a lot of poison counters, but you want to make sure that your deck has enough sacrifice fodder to support it. (Sacrifice fodder are creatures that you don’t mind sacrificing.)

Fynn, the Fangbearer is a low-cost threat that quickly start to give poison counters to your opponents. If you have other creatures with deathtouch in your deck, it gets even better, but just by itself it fits nicely with your game plan.

Corpse Cur is a bit clunky, but it does have infect, and it brings another infect creature from your yard. If you’re looking for more cards that can poison your opponent, this can be one of them.

Proliferate

Bloated Contaminator could also belong to the first group, as it has toxic. However, it also proliferates, and has quite beefy stats on top of that. There’s a lot to like about this three drop.

Seven mana is a lot, both you can proliferate four times with Planewide Celebration. If you have any opponent with 6 poison counters, this can take them out of the game. Furthermore, there are also three other modes, which can come in handy in the right scenario.

Thirsting Roots is a cheap modal spell. It can get you a basic land when you need it, or it can proliferate when that’s more beneficial to you.

Good Cards

One of the best budget friendly cards that can protect your commander is Swiftfoot Boots. It’s one of those cards that you really want to include in a deck that wants to keep its commander on the board.

You might want to run some more cheap ramp spells. If you decide to do so, you can go with Farseek and Rampant Growth.

You’re not necessarily a graveyard deck, but over the course of a long game, a lot of permanents will go to your graveyard. You can bring all of them back in a single swoop with Eerie Ultimatum.

You don’t want to run too many single-target removal spells, so you want the ones that you do to be incredibly versatile. Mythos of Nethroi is a perfect example of such a card.

Mana Base

It’s annoying when you can’t case your spells due to the lack of correct lands. One thing I like to do when building or upgrading Commander decks is to play lots of lands. You have so many things to do with your mana, that you really don’t want to play a land every turn. For this deck, I’d recommend going up to 41 or 42 lands.

So, this is actually a free Corrupted Influence upgrade tip: Remove the three worst nonland cards in the deck, then add three basic lands (one for each of the deck’s colors). Even this small thing will already improve your deck.

Mana Fixing

Then you’ll want to add lands that can make at least two color of mana that you need, and possibly come into play untapped. Some budget friendly examples for your Corrupting Influence deck would be:

• Pain lands: Brushland, Llanowar Wastes, Caves of Koilos
• Bounce lands: Selesnya Sanctuary, Golgari Rot Farm, Orzhov Basilica
• Check lands: Sunpetal Grove, Woodland Cemetery, Isolated Chapel
• Murmuring Bosk
• Fabled Passage

The first few such lands you add, should replace basic lands. However, you still probably want to run around 10-12 basic lands. So once you reach that number, start removing lands that always enter the battlefield tapped, such as Temple of Plenty.

Utility Lands

If you’re worried that you’ll draw too many lands, since you’re playing such a high number of them, you should include multiple utility lands. These are lands that have spell-like effects. Here are some examples that can work in this shell:

• Gavony Township
• Mosswort Bridge
• Vault of the Archangel
• Castle Locthwain
• Mortuary Mire
• Memorial to Folly

Corrupting Influence Upgrade – Full

So, we’re done with the budget part of the article. Now, it’s time to move on to the full upgrade. Cards that I’ll talk about here are either more popular, or have fewer reprints, than the cards above. You know, the whole supply and demand thing, which makes their price higher. However, if you don’t mind spending a bit extra, these will certainly make for a good Corrupting Influence upgrade.

More Poison

Venerated Rotpriest is a new card. It’s as cheap as it can be, and it can start dealing poison counters around as early as turn two. It’ll also often draw you at least one card during the course of the game, at which point it’s an excellent investment for one mana.

Triumph of the Hordes is a powerful spell. If you have a large board presence, it’ll often just win you the game on the spot. Sometimes it’ll be good enough to give all opponents at least 3 poison counter, so you’ll get full value from Ixhel.

Depending on what your opponents are playing, Phyrexian Crusader can be a really hard threat to deal with.

Similarly, Hand of the Praetors is another context-dependant card. Once you’re finished with upgrading your deck, you should count how many infect creatures you have. If there are at least 10, then you might want to include it in your deck.

Proliferate

Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting also comes from All Will Be One. With its first ability, you can both proliferate and draw a card. The second one can take care of a problematic creature, and the ultimate is totally bonkers. Each opponent gets to nine poison counters. It’ll take some time to get to that point, unless you also include this next card that will talk about.

Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider doesn’t have proliferate, but it does double the amount of counters you’re putting around. Was your opponent about to receive 5 poison counters? Make it 10, and take them out of the game. Your planeswalkers will also come into play with twice the amount of loyalty. Besides, Vorinclex also has a very good stats, and it can mess with some of the opponents’ stuff.

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is a nice card for proliferating, provided that you have some sacrifice fodder lying around. Mite tokens play nicely with it. Plus, it’s a little less expensive as it used to be, as it was just reprinted in Dominaria Remastered.

Good Cards

Most of your cards are permanents that work best if they remain in play. Heroic Intervention can help you with that in a big way.

It’s always amazing when you have access to the perfect card you need. Tutors are cards that search your library for a card, and therefore, help you with that. Demonic Tutor is one of the best ones you can get thanks to its low mana cost. Similarly, if you’re looking for creatures, Eladamri’s Call can get the job done.

If you’re playing a multiplayer game, Smothering Tithe can give you a bunch of Treasures, which will help you get ahead in the game.

Since you’re already in a market for playing with opponents’ cards, you might like Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor. It also fits with the theme of sneaking damage in. When you’re poisoning your opponent, you can also draw cards with Gix.

Mana Base

Here are some examples of lands that work similarly to the ones we mentioned before, but are more highly sought-after and therefore more expensive.

Mana Fixing

• Shock lands: Temple Garden, Overgrown Tomb, Godless Shrine
• Fetch lands: Windswept Heath, Verdant Catacombs, Marsh Flats
• The original duals: Savannah, Bayou, Scrubland
• Indatha Triome
• Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Utility Lands

• Boseiju, Who Endures
• Phyrexian Tower
• Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire

Cards to Remove

Now comes the hard part. Commander decks consist of exactly 99 card + 1 commander. So for every card you add to the deck, one has to go.

So, how can you decide which cards to remove? I’d suggest you start with cards that don’t support your theme, and aren’t extremely powerful on their own. For example, Night’s Whisper would be one such card. It is an okay draw spell, but isn’t amazing, and it doesn’t contribute to your theme of poisoning opponents.

Not all cards are that obvious. Some other cards that I’d look to remove first are:

• Windborn Muse – doesn’t progress your game plan, but might be worth it in some play groups
• Norn’s Annex – same as Windborn Muse
• Expand the Sphere – there are more efficient ways to ramp
• Phyrexian Atlas – there are more efficient ways to ramp
• Painful Truths – better card draw spells are available
• Scavenging Ooze – completely out of place

These are just some examples of cards that you could remove. When you’re deciding what to remove, one option you have is to remove a card that does a similar thing, but weaker. If you were to add White Sun’s Zenith, then you could remove Fumigate.

Corrupting Influence Upgraded Decklist

Here’s an example of an upgraded Corrupting Influence decklist. Of course, there’s absolutely no need for you to follow this decklist strictly. You should definitely build your deck in a way that’s fun to you.

Conclusion

This marks the end of my Corrupting Influence Upgrade Guide. You can let me know in the comments below, if there’s an absurdly good card that I’ve missed. There’s just such an abundance of Magic cards, that I most certainly skipped over a worthy inclusion or two. Anyway, I wanted to keep this article somewhat compact, so and doesn’t get too lengthy.

I mentioned various cards from the Phyrexia: All Will Be One set in this article.

If you’re looking for more Commander content, you might enjoy some of the following articles – especially if you’re just starting out:

• How to Build Your First Commander Deck
• 5 Tips on How to Improve Your Commander Deck
• Beginners’ Guide to Commander
• List of All Commander Precons

See ya next time!