How to Play Fumulus, The Infestation Commander Deck In Magic: The Gathering

Fumulus, the Infestation is one of the legendary creatures featured in Magic: The Gathering's Jumpstart set. It is a mono black commander, which means you can only play black and colorless cards in your deck. However, this is hardly a disadvantage.

A Fumulus, Infestation deck is all about sacrificing creatures. This gets in the way of sacrificing your own creatures and forcing your opponents to sacrifice theirs. The restriction to only black cards doesn't hurt the deck, since most of the mass sacrifice and sacrifice strategies are in suit anyway. If you like flooding the battlefield with tokens and sacrificing a ton, Fumulus, Infestation is the perfect commander for you.

Deck list

The deck list contains 30 creatures, nine sorceries, ten instants, ten artifacts, six enchantments, and 34 countries. The majority of the deck is cards that force your opponents to sacrifice creatures or take advantage of your own creatures dying.

Key card

Fumulus, The Attack

the commander, Fumulus, the attack is what makes the tire work. It e.gconverts any player who sacrifices a token into a 1/1 Insect token. Notably, Fumulus counts both you sacrifice your own cards and your opponents sacrifice.

Fumulus counts every moment a non-token creature dies to trigger, so if multiple creatures are sacrificed at once, they'll all give you a 1/1 bug with flying.

The the second effect helps you push your advantage and regain the life you lost in the earlier stages of the game. The tokens that Fumulus do too give you your own sacrificial fodderso you can get rid of weaker creatures as opposed to your main ones when you also need to sacrifice a creature. But sacrificing those tokens doesn't get you any new ones.

Erebo's dictation

Erebo's dictation is one of the best cards in the entire deck. It causes all creatures on your battlefield to die to force all your opponents to sacrifice a creature. Erebo's dictation doesn't care how the creature diesso it dies by sacrificing them yourself or by dying in battle, both of which will trigger Dictate of Erebos.

The biggest advantage of Dictate of Erebos is it becomes a prime removal target. This allows you to keep your commander safer, as Dictate of Erebos will take priority when dealing with a permanent.

Mirkwood bats

You'll be making a ton of creature tokens, so Mirkwood bats is the best card to turn those tokens into burns. When does the burn occur? a token is created or sacrificedwhich gives many of your flashcards an extra kick.

The burn from Mirkwood Bats combined with the burn from Fumulus stacks up quickly, the two compliment what the other wants to do perfectly. It turns tokens generated from Fumulus into damage, and if you choose to sacrifice those token creatures, you'll still get the value that Fumulus doesn't provide on its own.

Meathook Massacre II

Meathook Massacre II is a way to get tons of extra value out of your creatures. Many creatures in the deck come in, causing each player to sacrifice a creature. Of by paying three life you can sacrifice that creature and take it back immediately to force everyone to sacrifice two creatures.

Most of the time it's not worth paying X for Meathook Massacre unless it's late game. It's better to get it down early than waiting to have enough mana to turn on your sacrifice ability.

More often than not, your opponent will choose to pay three life instead of giving you a creature they sacrifice. But then the deck can win through burnsthis chip damage is something your opponents ultimately can't risk paying, giving you extra creatures to work with.

Blood artist

Blood artist is one of the most consistent ways to get extra burn. It triggers any creature that diesand with how many creatures will die during a matchup, it's not unlikely that Blood Artist will do double digit damage very quickly.

Blood Artist can only target one player with its effect. As such, it's best to use it on the opponent who is the biggest threat. You can also use it on an opponent you don't attack with the creatures that deal burn damage from Fumulus to keep the burn evenly distributed to all opponents.

How to play the deck

A Fumulus, is the Infestation deck all about forcing everyone to sacrifice creatures and slowly building value and resources from it. This occurs largely in the form of burns, both from Fumulus effect and the effect of different perms.

Your best source of forced sacrifice is creatures that cause everyone to sacrifice a creature, as they trigger Fumulus a total of four times. These cards include Cursed Marauder, Demon's Disciple, Fleshbag Marauder, and Merciless executioner. You also have the option to make mass sacrifices Make an example and Blasphemous injunction both of which double as placemats.

You have multiple payouts for creatures that die as well. Revel in Riches gives you Treasure tokens and an alternative win condition, Black market gives you ramp that grows with the death of all creatures, and Erebo's dictation leads to more creatures being sacrificed.

The the primary win condition for the deck is to win by burning and fighting. Fumulus can create many creature tokens with flying (making them harder to block) and burn with all of them. If your opponent has no blockers, each does two damage. Blood Artist, Memory Bastion, and Mirkwood bats help get extra burns to close games. Alternatively, you can win with Revel in Riches by having ten or more taxes for your maintenance.

The The biggest downside to the deck is its lack of play in the early game. You have some one-drops, but it takes a while for your sacrifices to kick in. In addition, your commander must stick to the battlefield. Without Fumulus, it will be much more difficult to reach your win condition. Fortunately, there is one decent little life gain in deckswhich helps to catch up on life while taking down your opponents life.