Mutate is a very unique mechanic. When I saw Snapdax, Apex of the Hunt in our first visit to Ikoria, I had to build him. As a mutate creature, I had to figure out the best way to abuse his ability, and that led me to thinking about infect.

Infect, as a mechanic, is pretty unique. Some would even call it broken, especially in Commander. While you'd normally need to deal 40 damage (or 21 Commander damage) to end a game, infect reduces that damage requirement to just ten. Infect was never built to be played with a format like Commander, and it's already a questionable decision at many tables to allow an infect commander. But as Snapdax, Apex of the Hunt doesn't actually come with infect, that should be okay? Right?

Mutating To An Infectious Victory

Mutate is a mechanic that came out in Ikoria, allowing players to pay an alternative cost to "fuse" the creature with another existing creature. When the mechanic came out, it was pretty confusing. The best way to think about it was by considering the "mutate" ability to be an aura that attaches to a creature (like Bestow). However, instead of being a creature and an aura, it just counts as one creature.

Since the mutate cost is an alternative cost, it's also affected by Commander tax. However, the interesting part (and the one that's relevant to our deck) is how it interacts with keywords. When you mutate a creature you get to choose to put it on top of or under the creature it's fusing with. If it goes under, the creature on top gets all of the mutate creature's abilities. The opposite is true if it goes on top.

And that brings us to how we sneakily give Snapdax infect. He doesn't have it naturally, so giving him infect is crucial to our gameplan. Although, since we're an infect deck and not a Snapdax deck specifically, any mutate creature will do. And since mutate creatures give us benefits whenever they mutate, the more mutate creatures we have the better. We can think of this sort of deck as a pyramid, building from the bottom up. At the very base are the creatures that set our infect plan in motion.

The Pyramid's Base - Infect

Mutate decks rely on having a strong base, and in this case that base is a handful of low-cost infect creatures. Among the top contenders for this spot are:

• Plague Stinger: Flying and infect allows us to get in damage with evasion.
• Flensermite: Always useful to gain some life while dealing damage.
• Plague Myr: Gives you a bit of ramp as well as infect
• Corpse Cur
• Flesh-Eater Imp: More infect and evasion
• Lost Leonin
• Tine Shrike
• Ichorclaw Myr
• Priests of Norn
• Skithyryx, The Blight Dragon
• Whispering Specter
• Hand of the Praetors
• Ichor Rats

These make up the infect package for the deck. They form the start of how we're building Snapdax. Let's look at the second level of the pyramid, the mutate creatures.

Pyramid Level 1: Mutate

Based on how mutate works as a mechanic [https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Mutate], once a creature goes on top of an infect creature, it, too, gets infect. We can use this to our benefit by running several creatures that offer benefits once we mutate, such as:

• Vulpikeet: Adds flying and counters to our creatures
• Necropanther: Since the deck's infect creatures are all small, we can easily get them back through mutating this creature.
• Dirge Bat: Mutate AND removal AND flying sounds too good to be true.
• Porcuparrot: No need to swing with infect if you can just tap to deal damage directly to the opponent's face.
• Chittering Harvester: Sacrificing creatures every time you mutate keeps the board relatively clear
• Cavern Whisperer: Discard can cut down on removal in your opponent's hands
• Regal Leosaur: A great option for pumping the small team of infect creatures into bigger ones
• Huntmaster Liger: Similar to Leosaur, but the pump value depends on how much times it's mutated before
• Cloudpiercer: Card selection is always a good thing in any deck that doesn't want to get bogged down.
• Mindleecher: Taking cards from your opponents' decks gives you options
• Everquill Phoenix

There aren't a lot of options for mutate creatures, since the keyword was only ever printed with Ikoria, but these serve our needs well. They give us a nice mix of filling the board with small infect threats or recurring them then pumping them up enough to swing for devastating hits. This deck has a single idea, and it wants to maximize on it, so the second level of the pyramid will examine how we do that.

Pyramid Level 2: Utility

We want to make sure our plan is resilient. Since we're going all-in on infect, we need to ramp up landing poison counters on our opponents. To that end, we'll include these cards:

• Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar: As long as one opponent gets hit, they all get hit.
• Skrelv, Defector Mite: protection from a color could get Snapdax through for damage
• Tainted Strike: Sometimes an opponent gets through for damage, why not make it infect?
• Grafted Exoskeleton: Snapdax with this equipped becomes a one-hit kill
• Key to the City: More evasion and it draws a card when it untaps
• Necrogen Communion: More ways to add poison damage, although this only gives four counters with Snapdax's double strike.
• Norn's Decree: Automatically gives Snapdax Toxic 1
• Offspring's Revenge: Resilience for your tiny infect creatures
• Phyresis: This puts infect on Snapdax after he's already on the field

Putting It All Together

Snapdax is a lot of fun to play and this is the general decklist I came up with:

Snapdax Infect | Commander | Jason Dookeran

• Commander (1)
• 1 Snapdax, Apex of the Hunt

• Creatures (29)
• 1 Cavern Whisperer
• 1 Chittering Harvester
• 1 Cloudpiercer
• 1 Corpse Cur
• 1 Cubwarden
• 1 Dirge Bat
• 1 Everquill Phoenix
• 1 Flensermite
• 1 Flesh-Eater Imp
• 1 Hand of the Praetors
• 1 Huntmaster Liger
• 1 Ichorclaw Myr
• 1 Ichor Rats
• 1 Insatiable Hemophage
• 1 Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar
• 1 Killian, Ink Duelist
• 1 Lost Leonin
• 1 Mindleecher
• 1 Necropanther
• 1 Plague Myr
• 1 Plague Stinger
• 1 Plankton, Tiny Tyrant
• 1 Porcuparrot
• 1 Priests of Norn
• 1 Regal Leosaur
• 1 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
• 1 Tine Shrike
• 1 Vulpikeet
• 1 Whispering Specter

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Chandra's Ignition
• 1 Infectious Inquiry
• 1 Mythos of Snapdax
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Painful Truths
• 1 Read the Bones
• 1 Ruinous Ultimatum
• 1 Sign in Blood

• Instants (10)
• 1 Anguished Unmaking
• 1 Boros Charm
• 1 Crackling Doom
• 1 Despark
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Mortify
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Tainted Strike
• 1 Vraska's Fall

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Boros Signet
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Grafted Exoskeleton
• 1 Key to the City
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Rakdos Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Talisman of Conviction
• 1 Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1 Talisman of Indulgence

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Necrogen Communion
• 1 Norn's Decree
• 1 Offspring's Revenge
• 1 Phyresis
• 1 Phyrexian Arena

• Lands (35)
• 2 Mountain
• 4 Plains
• 7 Swamp
• 1 Battlefield Forge
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Caves of Koilos
• 1 Clifftop Retreat
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Karn's Bastion
• 1 Luxury Suite
• 1 Nomad Outpost
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Savai Triome
• 1 Slayers' Stronghold
• 1 Spectator Seating
• 1 Sulfurous Springs
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Vault of Champions

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If you play this at your local game store, be warned that people may target you at the table. It can be extremely explosive, but that means you will always be a threat. Give Snapdax a whirl and see what you think of it.