Funny Story: I was playing a game of Commander with friends. I swung at a buddy of mine for 5 unblockable, which would have been lethal damage. He responded by casting Tainted Strike and targeting my creature. He had no poison counters at the time, so he survived combat, and then was able to beat me via commander damage when it went to his turn.
I think Rachel makes the most salient point here: All Will Be One makes Poison less scary and more interesting. The corrupted mechanic really encourages you to spread the poison around instead of focusing one person down, and that will make people feel less like they are being picked on, and in the end, we all want everyone to have fun, even if they lose.
@@sharktenko267Should a player need two different cards that say "when X happens, you win the game" because one can be too easy? This is just such a slippery argument. I mean, if it works for your group, go for it. But at what point do you draw the line and say "I've made enough changes"? I have a friend who's trying really hard to start a rule that if you haven't drawn a third or fourth land by turn 4 and 5, you can go get a land, because he's "tired of being mana screwed." He refuses to run more lands, and expects us to cater to his poor deck building choices. Is that what it's required for people to enjoy this game? Change the rules until deck building is easy as possible, and so every single deck can run optimally, without ever doing the legwork to make it happen without the changes?
One important point to make is that creatures with infect still do damage. The damage just does not cause loss of life. This is important for things that check for the amount of damage done like commander damage for example. If someone has melira out so that they can't get poison counters and get hit with a 21/21 Skittles the Posion Dragon (Commander), they won't get any poison counters but will die to commander damage.
Look I can not emphasize enough the fact that players can reliably give poison counter's to each opponent now for 2 and 3 mana. Reliable poison without combat changes things. It is actually closer now to having 10 poison to win if most through proliferating and direct placement as it happens to all at the same time.
Not if there are 2 or 3 players with that strategy in the pod. Two players makes the games turn 4-5 and they are over. Three poison players and your now just seeing turn 2-4 kills for the players in the pod and the player who doesn't play the poison strategy is just never going to have a shot in the game. Dislike this because at least with infect you were limited to it being a one hit kill.
I don't think the amount of poison counters needed should be changed, I just think that we need more cards introduced that can counter infect. We need more ways to prevent/remove poison counters from a player.
I agree. How easy would it be to have some kind of curative effect? It would likely give white a good power boost in a format it's a bit weak in, to boot.
I'd be cool with counters/answers/responses to any/all poison/infect/toxic. Sux that this set is focused on toxic. I don't like relying on gimmicks like that
@@PilliumRedius If the story winds up making a cure of some sort for phyresis then I could see a new keyword being made that would basically be the opposite of proliferate
Aggro would be fine, if toxic was interactable. As it stands, once you get a poison counter they just proliferate you to death. The way ive been dying to poison counters is either one shot by a card that grants infect, or a combo turn that just mass proliferates. Aggro is far off.
@Zuterwer Aggro had never been legitimately a viable strategy in Commander because of the numerous factors like life totals, number of opponents, etc. Meanwhile, I don't see losing to infect any worse than losing to Thassa's Oracle, or the numerous two card combos that exist in the format. In fact, I think it's on the fairer side of things.
If it took 15 poison counters to die, it would be less scary and you wouldn't always be ganged up against. It actually might make aggro more viable, not less.
Big thing is not the mites, I think it's the cards that just give each opponent a poison counter like Vraska's Fall or Infectious Bite. This combined with proliferate shores up a big weakness of infect where an opponent gets up defense fast enough that you can't get combat damage in.
@@erwanprn5491 Yes, that's what I'm saying, it is a plan B in case your opponent shuts down combat in some way. But it's important as that was a big weakness of poison strategies.
but you're okay with 2 drop permanents that keep players from casting spells, or attacking? What about competitive decks that storm off by turn 2 or 3? When was the last time you saw a Infect deck able to close a game within 5 urns in a competitive of casual pod of 3 or more? It hasn't, run removal and or counters and you wont need to worry and since everyone seems to hate infect so much and arch enemies the infect player you'll live longer than you anticipate.
There's also the 1 drop creature that gives poison counters when it or other creatures you control are targeted by a spell. Which is kinda busted especially with buyback or flashback spells.
@@erwanprn5491 sounds innocent when you say 3 cards but in reality that's 12 cards out of 60 that can generate poison counters without needing combat damage(x4 each). Also with the rotpriest out and spells like shore up, slip out the back ect will create a poison counter. so that "3" cards is more like 12 with a possible 20+ non combat triggered poison cards in one deck. which is insane.
At my table, when a player dies from infect damage, they become compleated and continue playing on the side of the infect player. Compleated players continue with their same life total and can no longer gain poison counters. Creates a really fun dynamic.
That makes infect waay too strong and I feel like it really encourages the infect player to just nuke out the slowest player at the table. The counter to that is everyone treats the infect player as arch enemy from the jump
The real problem with poison isn't just that there's a bunch of ways to get them on people. It's actually that there's almost no way to get them off of you. Now everybody is racing to do 40 before 1 person gets 10 triggers.
After so many shows that focus on new products, it's really refreshing to have a 40ish minute podcast of people sharing opinions and insights about the game. Really loved this episode :)
I like infect being an out, similar to how commander damage is always an out against life gain decks. However I think there should be ways to remove your poison counters. Seems a little bit odd that you're screwed forever if you get 1
That’s the fear I’m going into AWBO new capenna have so many cards proliferate just one poison counter is much scarier now then it ever was in the past.
@@dylantramutolo9705 He probably already does, but the commander banlist is an absolute joke for the most part. I think getting rid of it entirely makes more sense then having such an inconsistent banlist, and also if the banlist was consistent soo mant cards would get banned, including many commanders.
Honestly, I think Infect is fine. Pretty much any time a player specifically plays an infect strategy the whole table just nukes them. There's way more combo decks out there that just kill the entire table before the infect player can even get one player out of the game.
Was playing Wilson with Noble Heritage the other day and a buddy of mine was playing Atraxa infect and played a blighted agent turn two. His blighted agent got bigger and bigger as the turns went on and I just got to sit back and watch xD For those who don't know, noble heritage let's everyone put two +1/+1 counters on a creature they control, if they do then you get protection from that player until your next turn.
I love Noble Heritage so much. I put one in all my decks that run white, lol. One of my absolute favorites is running it with Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer. Won my most recent play session with that combo
What matters in these types of questions are philosophy, power level, and application. What is the philosophy of poison, and the philosophy of commander? Is the reason why the life totals are higher so you can have a longer more interactive game? The ability to play and use more cards from a larger pool? If so then thats a point toward increasing the poison meter. But what about poison? Why is the meter at 10? Hard to say, but if the reason was specifically to be half as large as the starting life total then its obvious it should probably increase at least philosophically. Next up - power level. Exactly how strong is infect and toxic? Well honestly that heavily depends on your playgroup. I have personally seen triumph of the hoards win many games. Also, poison and toxic are only powered up with an increase to proliferation cards. Being able to proliferate makes losing to poison seem unavoidable and uninteractable. This point is hard to measure so power level i will leave open. Lastly is application. How hard would it be for wizards to implement such a rules change? Well i dont know. I have heard before that poison is written on card text as killing on 10, and therefore it causes them ti be hesitant with altering it. I can see an issue there but oracle text does exist for many cards and mechanics. It may cause a headache for wizards but is that headache worth the application? How often exactly do we see infect? I feel it is honestly very powerful in mid to lower power environments but i also feel like its semi gentleman’d out of the game. Like land destruction, most understand the negative stigma around infect, and dont play it either to be nice, or to not become archenemy. But then again that in itself should be an argument as to good and disliked it is, and why it shouldn’t be as good as it is now.
I think you guys topped it off great at the end there. I see combo decks in almost every commander night I go to, and due to the 40 life and meta of commander, they usually have a good amount of time to get their combo pieces together. A viable agro strategy in commander is just what the format needs in order to keep everyone at the table on their toes
Treasure is way worse because every deck benefits from treasure. Both for its ramp and because its an artifact and there are so many artifact payoffs that do NOT say non token. A deck that is not a dedicated infect deck is not interested in a couple creatures with infect or toxic.
🤣👌 Edit: On a sad note tho, thats what people have to do in todays society to gain any recognition/traffic. Everything these days has to be the worst, best, scariest, op.. etc. its all a whole load of bs.
I have Atraxa infect/proliferate deck for a while build for 'Arch Enemy NB' deck in my playgroup. Main strategy is to hit everybody at least once for a 1 poison counter and then starts to proliferate like a crazy whole board. I don't play this deck very often because it is always rule 0 conversation if everybody is OK to play against it. And usually even if that's OK for them. It is 1 vs 3 game. Because when you are playing infect you became main threat at the table.
The issue I find is in a format with soo much proliferate, now with such a higher quantity of cards that can deal toxic, players will always draw into these cards and have the ability to start dealing the toxic/infect damage. Before there was not soo many infect creatures so with removal and a 100 card deck it was harder to get the win but now you can be dealing the damage/proliferating every turn mutliple times.
Skittles mono black voltron is hecka easy to win with, so I don’t know what you mean able not be able to draw into the cards! Plus tutors put cards in your hand anyway!
People who thinks infect and poison counters are scary and crying for a nerf are usually people who's set on their personal playstyle and don't like the meta to change. It's an undersupported mechanic that actually provides counters to lifegain and combo decks.
As someone who started playing mtg during the New Phyrexia set, this is the most excited I've been in a looooong time. Can't wait to make some fun decks
Two things about poison counters. First is that it's not a slap on strategy in most decks. Aside from rare cases like nekusar most decks can't reliably put infect counters across the entire board in a single turn. The only thing that might make poison too strong is that there are to few ways to remove poison counters. Most counter and superfriends decks are going to run proliferate anyway so if 1 player plays infect the whole table can now proliferate that 1 poison counter and kill that player. Is it a fast kill most likely not but once that first spell is cast its only going to take 3 proliferate cards from the remaining 3 players to have poison kill. But even then a rule change of "poison counters can't be proliferated" would fix the problem better than raising the poison count.
Another aspect to think about is the fact that while players may not have an infect deck, some of the proliferate cards are just lateral cards or even upgrades of already existing cards (Unnatural Restoration vs Regrowth). So even though I may not be doing infect/poison strategy, someone else may be doing it and I can assist in taking out another player by proliferating. IE, there can be up to 2 additional players helping the infect player at the table
unnatural restoration can only return permanents. regrowth can return anything. There's not a single card with proliferate thats on par with the best version of an effect if it didn't proliferate.
@@aspasia3 yeah, but if you're already playing another deck that depends on counters that becomes a reasonable pick over regrowth nowhere near a reason to nerf infect though
@@Booklat1 It only becomes a problem when the group of decks goes from 1 in the pod to 2 or 3 poison counter decks. The more poison counter players the faster the counters come and that is where the issues will start to surface for the non infect deck players to where it probably will be an issue then. Players will be better off killing the non poison counter players and the more players in the pod with that strategy the faster the kills will happen. Turn 2 kills could easily be a norm in those circumstances for the player not playing infect which will definitely cause them to not want to play that in the future.
@@codyskater6073 i play with strangers most of the time and it does awesome usually, but it is very tricky to pilot in a way that doesnt leave you vulnerable to getting ganged up on
Right? if Infect was so powerful, how come there's no CEDH infect deck that has won tournaments? 2 card combos and cards that say "I win the game" are the really scary decks!
What u like about the new toxic mechanic is that if you give your creatures trample as long as they deal 1 damage they get to add all their toxic counters.
I dunno, the 1-drops basically ‘start the engine.’ I tried taking them out and noticed that the modern deck basically makes proliferate it’s mid to endgame play but it needs at least 1 counter to get going. I see them like the requisite 9 and under count of unblockable creatures in Yuriko. You don’t need them all, but you want at least one to start
I'm a little surprised that a comparison of poison vs commander damage wasn't brought up. Poison is just commander damage that any of your poison causing creatures can apply and can be boosted when you cast proliferate. That reason alone is why I think something should change, be it commander damage or poison # to kill.
I played the Abzan pre con and it seemed pretty good, but people complained about dying to it on like turn 8-14, I agree with what some are saying about ways to avoid poison counters or removing them because it’d just make new players feel like they aren’t doomed as soon as they get 1.
My problem with infect/poison counters has never been decks dedicated to the strategy, but rather singular cards like Grafted Exoskeleton and Triumph of the Hordes being able to go in nearly any deck (only green ones in the case of Triumph but still), and someone will just suddenly take out another player when they otherwise would have been first or second out. My group, to prevent this, has poison work like the other main damage-based alternate win condition, Commander Damage. 21 poison is game over. And it's arguably easier to reach than commander damage, since so many cards can apply poison
That's dumb and if you hate in fact because of things like triumph of the hoard and grafted skeleton Then why don't you have a problem with cards like crater hoove. And if you do have a problem with both then the real problem you have is with combo Or the game ending in 6 turns.
Where I play, the store rule is 20, toxic vs infect, infect is bust broken borderline since it's scale and even if creature block it curse blocking creature.
I don't think it needs to be raised. In a 4 player commander game, it's nigh impossible for the Infector to win. Yes, a single player might get knocked out early, but is it any different from other strategies that can push 21+ commander damage by turn 5 even in casual?
@@heath1948 A problem that can be dealt with via removal, like any other strategy. It’s only really a problem imo if there are 2-3 infect players in your pod which might lead to very early kills against the non-infector(s). Only time will tell how popular infect edh decks become though.
I have made the point about decks having to think about having blockers and more of an early ground game before in response to the entire format and local metas becoming too combo-dependent. Forcing your opponents to think about an early 'ground game' can change the entire calculus of deckbuilding, especially in higher level play where many decks exist only as a 2-card win condition and 97 other cards designed to sandbag until you can find those two cards. Since the community is vehemently against the idea of more bans, advancing aggro strategies is the only real answer for an increasingly combo-centric format.
The biggest disadvantage of playing poison with proliferate, if that once everyone has like 5 counters, they are all going to kill you and then continue playing a nice friendly game after
My issue is how little interaction there is with poison counters. There are very few cards that will let you remove counters from a player. Kinda like emblems, once they're in the game there's not much you can do about it.
Poison is an old school magic and is fair play. Commander doesn't make poison more powerful, it actually hurts poison because you have 3 opponents instead of one. The og rule is fine.
Agreed. Unless you take out everyone at once, usually with TotH which is an old card anyway, then you probably knock out 1 person and get focused on. 10 is fine. If it was raised then no one would ever run or want to run poison synergies aside from the toxic stuff that relies of players staying alive with poison counters. The winning via poison counters strat would pretty much be gone.
Unless you're the one person that suddenly loses out of nowhere early on, and have to sit and wait for the game to end. That's the problem with infect - it's too easy to knock one person out quickly and out of nowhere.
From the experience I've had running my Atraxa praetors voice deck I have been able to kill all the table, by running a bit more laid back and using the sorcerys that give players poison counters and proliferating to death Edit: should note used the poison precon as a base and upgraded
My biggest problem with Infect has to do with interactivity, or rather the lack thereof. Outside of playing one of the handful of dedicated anti-poison/counters cards like Solemnity or one of the 2 Meliras, once you get 1 counter on you any additional source of poison or proliferate is an inevitable death sentence that you can't do anything about besides pointing every counter/removal spell and combat at the player who is threatening you, which may not even be reasonable anymore due to ONE increasing the visibility of poison as an option and thus increasing the chances of having multiple decks that are on poison at one table. Increasing the required number of poison counters would mitigate this problem, that and/or introducing a generic "anti-proliferate" type effect that can be used to combat poison in a similar way to how life-gain staves off combat damage/burn or shuffle-back effects like Elixir of Immortality or the "shuffle Titans" lets you counteract heavy mill
From 1 counter to 9, poison counters do nothing you have them. Other cards have to do something about those counters to take them to 10, when they finally matter. And there is a way to deal with every single card that proliferates or would put counters on you. If you end an EDH game with 7 poison counters, none of them mattered. That’s not too strong compared to a metric ton of other cards and strategies that can win the game much easier as opposed to taking out one player with poison at a time.
if you can't remove the permanents a player is threatening to kill you with, you just remove the player. Its not that complicated. Sometimes you can't and you lose. Thats how the game works.
"pointing every counter/removal spell and combat at the player who is threatening you" is exactly the point though. Every strategy has its counters, and that's one of the counters for infect.
So like every other strategy if you don't interact with them they will beat you.... got it. You should not be able to have tools that just nullify every strategy. It has noting to do with how powerful the mechanic is its that you don't like it. There are 2 card combos that don't get as much hate as Infect. It is no different than any other strategy if you don't interact you will lose. Oh no you got eliminated from the game... that's how the game goes. Someone has to win someone has to lose. You are more likely to lose then win already. Learn to lose.
@@WillisPtheone I suspect the people complaining about infect are the same people who plan to sit there and do nothing for 5 turns straight just to assemble their infinite solitaire otk. God forbid commander actually receive somewhat decent aggro strategies that apply pressure to these types of decks and force them to actually interact with OTHER peoples boards for once
I wish they would have done more Corrupted cards as it incentivizes players to spread the poison instead of running 1 person down, I loved Ixhels design because it is a much more normal deck than trying to aggro kill 1 person
I think it should go to 13. 12 is a good divisible number. 6 strikes from 2/2 infect or toxic 2, 4 from a 3/3, 3 from a 4/4. Then +1 due to the increase of the proliferate mechanic. 13 is also a genrealy considered an unlucky number, so it thematically suits the evil nature of poison counters. Finally it's more incremental than 15 or 20, so if they want to make a change, it will be more subtle, and they can more easily increase it or undo it later.
At min 36 you guys touch on a reason I love aggro strategies so much in commander. Not developing a board state and ramping for three or four turns in a row should have a consequence. I have a Skittles deck and I like to go after green players asap for that reason. I too think toxic will make these decks better. You can have an initial aggro early game plan and then focus on your midrange corrupted payoffs in the mid game, and then dial it up again late game with proliferate. That play pattern of fast, slow, fast, I think will be a fresh take to these decks
As a Boros lover, that's my favorite way to handle over the top decks. Gishath, Sythis, Golos(rip), any other deck that needs to get stopped before they get rolling, aggro makes them slow down and interact.
I prefer the battle cruiser type play of the EDH spectrum. That is why I don't play the other parts of magic anymore since I like to see the big splashy things that can happen with higher mana curves. Aggro is already a huge strategy and very good in the standard, modern, legacy formats that you can play in. Aggro just ruins the EDH format to me and I think should be removed from the format since all of the aggro formats are dying right now.
@@matthewrose8002 The thing is, if you are a battle cruiser player, you should like aggro players like me. It is the players who play 2-3 spells a turn after getting their ramp and draw engines online and like to combo out that we need to worry about. Does not even have to be infinite combos either. Having aggro decks in the meta is healthy to make those types of players spend time on interaction.
@@dorsalfin22 I play all of the types from cEDH turn 2-3 combo decks, control, precon plus, battle cruisers, etc... I play decks to match the other decks at the table. The battle cruiser games are the most fun since you get to see more card variety. It also has more people who are able to get into that type of deck in terms of expense.
Bring in "cleanse" If you have a poison counter remove 1. It'll add a pendulum like effect to have a fighting chance, & would engage/encourage the player to play those cards to remove them. Can already smell something like coming very soon, War of the Machines, hint-nudge.
Dont know, Melira got far weaker in preventing the spread from a lore perspective, or the new glistening oil is that much more potent. From a game perspective it´s long overdue. "Target(opponent) player loses all counters" there are 2 cards that do that.
Lutri. A Companion whose requirement is that your deck has to be singleton; banned because that's a non issue in commander so if they didn't ban it every deck with UR in it would be running it as a companion by default.
Wonderful video and discussion, as always! Big shoutout to my homie Windows making an appearance at 19:50; can't believe they finally made it on the show! 😂
When I first started playing, it was in Mirrodin Besieged. Infect was the thing, but I didn't know anything about it. As I have grown as a player, I always had a place for infect in my heart. With the newest set, I like that infect is the "new" strategy for commander. Whilst it was possible, it was unreliable.
It wasn't really the poison counters, it was Infect itself. Mostly revolving around 2 cards, Blightsteel Colossus and Triumph of the Hordes which almost always come out of nowhere leaving you no chance to respond or prepare.
I mean, don't overwhelming stampede and craterhoof behemoth do the very same? Hell, I've seen Master of Cruelties close out games faster than Blightsteel.
Just like war of the spark added more planeswalkers and made superfriends pretty good I think this helps that strategy and infect which is a good thing as keeping diverse is not bad
If I may can I restate the problem as I don't feel that my concerns were addressed in this episode. Poison can be interacted with (proliferated) by multiple players which is different than commander damage. When multiple players use poison counters or proliferate it moves the goalpost to much. I just lost a game t4 because the other 3 players basically only had to add 3.33 poison counters to me each. It is not the agro versions that scare me it is the control variants that will take advantage of the meta shift more. Many players at our LGS are now shifting to winning to poison to take advantage of this new meta. 24 out of yesterday's 30 decks had an ability to add a poison counter which has never happened before. I added 20 cards to my atraxa poison deck so I think that one has improved poison by at least 40%
If anything, more counter removal. That could counter poison counters if it is too powerful, and also removing any other counters now 1 or two mana, remove a specific counter or any counter, the amount of mana determining that like various counter spells being priced out.
Just have a reverse proliferate effect. Everything will be fine then and you could also use it to counter someone's experience counters or energy counters.
The issue becomes it needs to be useful counters removal besides that. Since there’s no side board/one round games and you don’t want to always run X deck against Y deck. If you are making cards that run counters removal that everyone has to start running to make sure they can avoid toxic/infect and that’s all they do it’s a dead card. If it at least decent with another upside it’s better, but you also don’t want to make even more deck staples.
@@BlueGriffin20 Thats why it needs to be able to remove counters from permeants as well. Loyalty, +1/+1, charge counters, anything else and it will be an option.
I am all for alternative win cons. Games have to end and if somebody manages to poison the whole table, that actually sounds like a pretty exciting game to me where most likely, a number of insane plays happened :)
I was distracted, did they say anything about stacking toxic and infect. A 4/4 toxic 1 double strike go in for combat damage and throw down tainted strike lol
IMO. I believe we should definitely take into account that Proliferate is ridiculously strong, not just for upping Infect counters, but Planeswalker loyalty as well. With Phyrexians becoming more prevalent in the sets to come. Infect strategies are going get stronger and more popular than ever. A rules change may not be needed now, but perhaps later as long as Proliferate gets more support.
Anyone who thinks that the rule should change to more than 10 poison counters is just wrong. Poison just isn't a strong or scary strategy. Play a couple more removal cards.
At the end of the day, the single scariest thing in this set is Venerated Rotpriest. Toxic gives redundancy, toxic + proliferate will work the same as infect + proliferate... But that new creature is pure evil to be killed on the spot
The Proliferate looks so much scarier - you can get it on your mana ramp, removal and even some value cards. Can easily give out 4-5 counters to the table out of cards that were not in dedicated Wincon slots. Also we will likely get more toxic and proliferate in March of the Machine.
@@MarvelOfRain Yes, but at least is a flexible mechanic, that can be used in a number of different strategies even without toxic/infect. Is it scary in this set? Yes, but not as scary as turn 1 Rotpriest, IMO
my take here playing infect, if two or more are playing infect in a commander night I think the count should be 15 or maybe 20 depending (maybe a toxic factor per infect number of decks?) if there is ONLY one player using infect gets REALLY hard to stack up counters across the table, so 10 is still a challenging goal
i don't think the infect rules really need to change. the worse thing is that usually the infect player takes out one opponent really fast and then the other two gang up on them and take them out just as fast. yes you can proliferate the counters but the same thing happens, the players gang up and you lose.
thats the problem. It kills one player, then the game stagnates, or the infect player dies and the game stagnates. It is the "Fuck you in particular" of commander decks.
@@ottekitfun9626 And how often does that happen until people realise it's not very fun to have it at the table and just stop bringing it? The community can sort it out without rules changes.
@@MrMarnel True though ideally WotC would balance it so that the community doesn't have to. I'm not an infect player but it'd be nice for both them to have their mechanic they like and everyone else's game to not get lame, which seems like it should be possible...
I still don't think poison is that strong in commander, aside from combo or triumph of the hordes, and the good old buff the infect monster and give it trample (none of which needs to be on a dedicated infect deck), nothing has changed much, the thing is that most commander players are on the casual side and just don't like the pressure of poison counters, just like milling strategies it isn't really that strong and most of the times it just tilts people.
The only reason infect might need changing is if it becomes so popular that 2-3 players per pod end up consists you playing infect/toxic decks. As long as it's 1 per pool it's still not great but the. But the strength scales with the number of players playing that deck type.
That's a good point to be fair - and not something I've thought of prior. We've got a guy at our local game store whom plays a Golgari Infect Deck, but aside from him, I can't think of another player that regularly plays an Infect Deck (not just 'Triumph of the Hordes' or 'Grafted Exoskeleton' as a win con within another Deck with an alternative main theme, but an Infect Aggro/Proliferate Deck designed to get three other players to ten poison counters as the main strategy of the Deck). Just as is addressed in the video, he regularly knocks out a single player and equally rarely wins a game. As the only Infect player at the table, his Deck attracts a lot of hate early on and generally loses traction towards the mid-to-late game. However, should two, even three of the players be playing decks that use Poison Counters as a main win con (and these decks are tuned, with decent proliferate support, solid mana base and rocks, thought out curve, staple win cons such as Triumph, Grafted Exoskeleton etc), the lethality of the game is increased by magnitudes and as the non-infect player at the table that would be very difficult to navigate and would leave you very vulnerable. Still, I'd rather die after Four Turns to an Infect Bloodbath than after Thirteen Turns against a Stax Player whom has denied all of my resources, costed me out of the game and has chipped away at me to a slow, grinding but inevitable loss. There are certainly some other strategies that have much more support that I'd argue even with the new Phyrexia: All Will Be One additions still make the game much more inhospitable and miserable for current players (that aren't being looked at with the vitriol that Infect/Toxic/Poison is).
@@bengillett5531 yeah I agree with you on all points here. I think for a short period of time infect and toxic will flood the play space and it will feel overwhelming but with time that will pass and it will be brought back to where it is today just with a bit more support and with that support to make it at least viable. Because right now infect doesn't win.
My first deck was Atraxa infect and i was really stoked to see ONE come up with toxic and as Craig said, i replaced A LOT of cards in that deck and made it less control and more in your face and aggro. Before that it really was in this wierd limbo where you need to infect everyone and then pray for drawing enough prolif to finish the whole table. Now it has clear identity of aggro deck... and I love it. Please dont change it CRC.
If it changes, then it is a slippery slope IMO. Are cards like Shadowborn Apostle, Relentless Rats ect. Facing the same problem ? It has always been that the rules on the card takes the president to the standard rules…so changing poison would be a direct violation to that philosophy. So only if the count goes up on the poison rule in general, then it should NOT change
So yall mentioned that too many or too power proliferate card may exist or may be a problem in the near future. How much did super friends and counters matter deck get improved?
They got some new toys but the mana value of Planeswalkers themselves prohibit abuse. Adding counters to creatures is not as crazy as infect either and has been around a while
I don’t mind poison counters, I just hate infect. Infect is just better commander damage that isn’t limited to one card. Honestly, I would say that if infect itself was banned, I’d be more than happy to see new poison cards printed. Toxic is a very nice way of handling it.
I don't personally think Infect is a problem. I've played Infect, and I've only one once with a real infect deck. Triumph of the Hordes and Blightsteel are what people talk about with Infect. I have only won 2, maybe 3 times with an Infect deck, but I've won several times because of Blightsteel or Triumph of the Hordes, but Blightsteel is an 11 mana spell, and Triumph is just OverRun.exe. We should definetly see these cards in the wild first
I still think 10 is wayyy to low its too easy to one shot someone with poison what I didn't hear is that its not typically just one creature that has infect its 2-5 if not more where they each can deal poison counters which is super powerful i was once in a game where the infect player was playing atraxa and had like 12 creatures with infect or poisonous and he cast a cyclonic rift and cast something that gave all his creatures +12/+12 and double strike and killed everyone in one turn twice over
Unless you are running an Isochrom Sceptor imprinted with Prologue of Phyresis, then I think 20 poison counters would be too much (currently my LGS has that rule). At a maximum, I'd say 15 would be okay-ish. Overall, the theme is a lot stronger now but is also that "kill on sight" commander deck. Maybe more data needs to be collected before a decision could be made.
I think infect and posion counters should be a bit like commander damage each player has their own count for each player rather than 1 person dealing you 7 and another player dealing you 3 and you dying the player that dealt you 7 is 1 count and the player that dealt you 3 is another count aswell
In my play group we changed the number of required poison counters from 10 to 21 to match commander damage. The only way to combat infect otherwise was to target then infect player which is just isn’t a fun experience. But with the introduction of toxic we’re going to revisit it
Taking damage can be overcome by gaining more life. Milling cards from a person's deck can be reversed by cards that can return other cards back to the deck ,the hand, and the battlefield . Minus one counters and plus one counters cancel each other. What is used to reverse the putting of poison counters on a player at this time?
The problem is there are now cards that give all your opponents one poison counter for just casting a spell, and then all you have to do from there is start proliferating. No need to attack just use all the proliferate support(old and new) thats out there and you can potentially kill all your opponents in just a few turns. So in my opinion 10 poison counters in commander is too few especially if more then one player is playing a similar strat, then its just whoever can proliferate the fastest wins in that situation.
Man, its 30, not 10 what you talking about? XD on a 1v1 format like modern, you need to deal 10 poison dmg to win, on commander, you need to deal 30, you suggesting to change it to 60. So on all other formats its 10 poison i win the game, you want to change from 10 to 60? wtf XD
Commander poison needs to be 10xThe amount of oppnents. Or possibly if you want to do 20 then you could do 5xthe number of players. And it would be set at the start of the game.
@@thedanath do you even math kido? On 1v1 format, how many poison counters you need to deal to WIN? 10, its 10. How many poison counters you need to deal on commander to WIN? 30, its 30. I think you are playing by the wrong rule if you think that after one person gets 10 poison counters the game ends, you need to deal a total of 30 poison to win on commander, not 10.
I don't like cards being banned in Commander, and strongly disagreed with the recent Golos ban, but I do think the instant-kill Infect cards (Triumph of Hordes, Tainted Strike, Blightsteel, Grafted Exoskeleton, Phyresis) are potential problems. They're a noob trap; I see newer players putting them into random decks with no other Infect, only to be confused when an opponent gets salty. Newer players often don't know about Rule 0 discussions and the stigma of Infect.
I resonated so strongly with Craig's comment about infect being good at either aggroing out one player or getting to 5 or 7 on other players and then losing haha. It was just hard to get any card or mana value apart from poison counters. But all this proliferate support (a little worried about the superfriends themes now), but now it is time to brake down my Fynn deck and brew a new simic ezuri "tickle you with poison and watch you proliferate to death" deck!
White green combo will be even stronger now with this strategy. So for tokens and ramp, I think yes on increasing. Proliferate is easier now too an can be done multiple times now too.
Here is what Poisonous reads from Sabertooth Cobra: "Whenever Sabertooth Cobra deals damage to a player, that player gets a poison counter. The player gets another poison counter at the beginning of their next upkeep unless they pay 2 before that step. (A player with ten or more poison counters loses the game.)" So: Infect can scale with a creature's Power. Toxic only deals Toxic N damage, where N is the number next to the trigger. Poisonous deals 1 point of Poison, but a player can pay 2 generic mana before their upkeep to prevent that second point of Poison damage from a Poisonous creature. That being said, I think that's the fix for Poison damage as a game state rule/win condition: At the beginning of a player's upkeep, that player may pay 2 to remove a poison counter. A player may pay this cost any number of times. Another solution is similar to Luminarch Ascension, where it could be a permanent card like an Enchantment. This could be a hypothetical card the Rules Committee could recommend as well: Name: Cure For The Sickness Cost: 1/W Rarity: Uncommon Supertype: Enchantment - Aura Text: Enchant Player. At the end of each player's turn, put an Antidote counter on Cure For The Sickness. At the beginning of enchanted player's upkeep, they may pay W and remove X Antidote counters. If the enchanted player does, that player removes X Poison counters from themselves. Note: The card above is just one idea that could be implemented to deal with the speed at which a player can be defeated by poison damage. The same is true for an addition to Poison that allows players to be able to pay mana and be able to remove Poison counters. Edit: Poisonous is actually read as Poisonous N, which is what Toxic is. The two cards with Poisonous are Snake Cult Initiation (Poisonous 3) and Virulent Sliver (Poisonous 1).
is there any cleansing spells? i mean the answer for spells to lose life are ones to gains life, draw card spells and effects the counter are discard spells, mill effects have shuffle your graveyard in your library. if you make an excessive of toxic/infect/poison creatures and spells one would think you'd make something that would or could help against. just doesn't sound like a rules issue sounds more like a designer issue.
It'll be fine for a while. Maybe raise it in a couple years if they give it another batch of support. But even then, don't change anything until we actually see the extent of its popularity.
Funny Story: I was playing a game of Commander with friends. I swung at a buddy of mine for 5 unblockable, which would have been lethal damage. He responded by casting Tainted Strike and targeting my creature. He had no poison counters at the time, so he survived combat, and then was able to beat me via commander damage when it went to his turn.
Insanely good play, I’d never think of that
Truly megamind
That is a top tier play, kudos to your friend!
Your friend is next level
Galaxy brain
I think Rachel makes the most salient point here: All Will Be One makes Poison less scary and more interesting. The corrupted mechanic really encourages you to spread the poison around instead of focusing one person down, and that will make people feel less like they are being picked on, and in the end, we all want everyone to have fun, even if they lose.
Not on the games smy game store experienced
it does i agree
poison should still be 15
My playgroup set the infect rule to 20 we figured if half life is good enough in 1v1 its good enough for commander
it's basically losing is fine as long as I still got to actually play the game.
@@sharktenko267Should a player need two different cards that say "when X happens, you win the game" because one can be too easy? This is just such a slippery argument. I mean, if it works for your group, go for it. But at what point do you draw the line and say "I've made enough changes"? I have a friend who's trying really hard to start a rule that if you haven't drawn a third or fourth land by turn 4 and 5, you can go get a land, because he's "tired of being mana screwed." He refuses to run more lands, and expects us to cater to his poor deck building choices. Is that what it's required for people to enjoy this game? Change the rules until deck building is easy as possible, and so every single deck can run optimally, without ever doing the legwork to make it happen without the changes?
One important point to make is that creatures with infect still do damage. The damage just does not cause loss of life. This is important for things that check for the amount of damage done like commander damage for example. If someone has melira out so that they can't get poison counters and get hit with a 21/21 Skittles the Posion Dragon (Commander), they won't get any poison counters but will die to commander damage.
skittles the doomhive
The biggest weakness of infect is other players likely can’t help you kill other players
Toxic fixes that though, toxic creatures can deal regular damage in addition to poison counters.
Look I can not emphasize enough the fact that players can reliably give poison counter's to each opponent now for 2 and 3 mana. Reliable poison without combat changes things. It is actually closer now to having 10 poison to win if most through proliferating and direct placement as it happens to all at the same time.
Proliferate.
Not if there are 2 or 3 players with that strategy in the pod. Two players makes the games turn 4-5 and they are over. Three poison players and your now just seeing turn 2-4 kills for the players in the pod and the player who doesn't play the poison strategy is just never going to have a shot in the game. Dislike this because at least with infect you were limited to it being a one hit kill.
Most players aren't interested in killing other players when you're playing infect.
I don't think the amount of poison counters needed should be changed, I just think that we need more cards introduced that can counter infect. We need more ways to prevent/remove poison counters from a player.
I agree. How easy would it be to have some kind of curative effect? It would likely give white a good power boost in a format it's a bit weak in, to boot.
I'd be cool with counters/answers/responses to any/all poison/infect/toxic.
Sux that this set is focused on toxic. I don't like relying on gimmicks like that
@@PilliumRedius If the story winds up making a cure of some sort for phyresis then I could see a new keyword being made that would basically be the opposite of proliferate
I bet they will make this sort of thing whether in the next standard or the next horizons/legends set depends how good poison does in standard.
Make Leeches great again (Oh it was never great but it needs a reprint for sure. To bad it's in the reserved list)
I think the rule is fine. If anything, it gives players a viable Aggro strategy in Commander.
Aggro would be fine, if toxic was interactable. As it stands, once you get a poison counter they just proliferate you to death.
The way ive been dying to poison counters is either one shot by a card that grants infect, or a combo turn that just mass proliferates. Aggro is far off.
Is it really an aggro strategy when proliferate looks like it's still the best way to win.
@Zuterwer Aggro had never been legitimately a viable strategy in Commander because of the numerous factors like life totals, number of opponents, etc. Meanwhile, I don't see losing to infect any worse than losing to Thassa's Oracle, or the numerous two card combos that exist in the format. In fact, I think it's on the fairer side of things.
@@zuterwer1835 if your trying to win by proliferating Poison counters, you’ve got your work cut out for you already
If it took 15 poison counters to die, it would be less scary and you wouldn't always be ganged up against. It actually might make aggro more viable, not less.
Big thing is not the mites, I think it's the cards that just give each opponent a poison counter like Vraska's Fall or Infectious Bite. This combined with proliferate shores up a big weakness of infect where an opponent gets up defense fast enough that you can't get combat damage in.
But there is only 3 new cards that give poison counter without rely on a creature doing combat. It seems like a plan B.
@@erwanprn5491 Yes, that's what I'm saying, it is a plan B in case your opponent shuts down combat in some way. But it's important as that was a big weakness of poison strategies.
but you're okay with 2 drop permanents that keep players from casting spells, or attacking? What about competitive decks that storm off by turn 2 or 3? When was the last time you saw a Infect deck able to close a game within 5 urns in a competitive of casual pod of 3 or more? It hasn't, run removal and or counters and you wont need to worry and since everyone seems to hate infect so much and arch enemies the infect player you'll live longer than you anticipate.
There's also the 1 drop creature that gives poison counters when it or other creatures you control are targeted by a spell. Which is kinda busted especially with buyback or flashback spells.
@@erwanprn5491 sounds innocent when you say 3 cards but in reality that's 12 cards out of 60 that can generate poison counters without needing combat damage(x4 each). Also with the rotpriest out and spells like shore up, slip out the back ect will create a poison counter. so that "3" cards is more like 12 with a possible 20+ non combat triggered poison cards in one deck. which is insane.
Love these conversation/debate videos. With the constant product/set focus videos it can get overwhelming honestly.
At my table, when a player dies from infect damage, they become compleated and continue playing on the side of the infect player. Compleated players continue with their same life total and can no longer gain poison counters. Creates a really fun dynamic.
That's interesting. I love it!
That sounds so sick
That makes infect waay too strong and I feel like it really encourages the infect player to just nuke out the slowest player at the table. The counter to that is everyone treats the infect player as arch enemy from the jump
@@joshholmes1372 sounds like it works for them. Maybe it wouldn't work at your table.
@@40Found yeah, if it works it works.
The real problem with poison isn't just that there's a bunch of ways to get them on people. It's actually that there's almost no way to get them off of you. Now everybody is racing to do 40 before 1 person gets 10 triggers.
Leeches
Except that most games are more than 1 player and the moment you do infect you become a target
Agree
Exactly. Make it 15 or 20 and have a way to remove it.
@@NathanHedglinPoison isn't good now, that would erase it from the metagame
After so many shows that focus on new products, it's really refreshing to have a 40ish minute podcast of people sharing opinions and insights about the game. Really loved this episode :)
I love how Craig giggles when Rachel describes a turn 2 where someone already has 4 infect counters (5:39). He loves infect so much.
Only complaint....they are not infect counters they are poison counters. Infect is the mechanic not the counters.
That’s his gimmick
I managed that on turn 3 once. With a ridiculously stupid start with Skittles. And killed someone on turn 4. And then the other 2 opponents conceded.
@@BAAWAKnight turn 3 blightsteel colossus ft. tinker and ornithopter
I like infect being an out, similar to how commander damage is always an out against life gain decks. However I think there should be ways to remove your poison counters. Seems a little bit odd that you're screwed forever if you get 1
Especially if there’s an Atraxa on the field. You’re basically screwed until Atraxa is removed
That’s the fear I’m going into AWBO new capenna have so many cards proliferate just one poison counter is much scarier now then it ever was in the past.
Sun cleanser removes counters on players
@@Lootprechaun on opponents, not yourself . Otherwise suncleanser would be so good.
@@ninjaman0003 oh no, oops.
Short answer of the title: No it is not.
Until Sheldon gets compleated and deems the state of commander to be broken.
@@dylantramutolo9705 He probably already does, but the commander banlist is an absolute joke for the most part. I think getting rid of it entirely makes more sense then having such an inconsistent banlist, and also if the banlist was consistent soo mant cards would get banned, including many commanders.
@@thetruth4654 let's just ban sheldon
Yeah dude your opponents starting at 10 life is such an underpowered strategy
@@kotasum8386 But we also have plenty of infinite combos winning by turn 4
Honestly, I think Infect is fine. Pretty much any time a player specifically plays an infect strategy the whole table just nukes them. There's way more combo decks out there that just kill the entire table before the infect player can even get one player out of the game.
Was playing Wilson with Noble Heritage the other day and a buddy of mine was playing Atraxa infect and played a blighted agent turn two. His blighted agent got bigger and bigger as the turns went on and I just got to sit back and watch xD
For those who don't know, noble heritage let's everyone put two +1/+1 counters on a creature they control, if they do then you get protection from that player until your next turn.
I love Noble Heritage so much. I put one in all my decks that run white, lol. One of my absolute favorites is running it with Baeloth Barrityl, Entertainer. Won my most recent play session with that combo
The most infect kills come from a randomly placed blightsteel that appears and 1 shots ppl, mostly from non-infect decks
What matters in these types of questions are philosophy, power level, and application.
What is the philosophy of poison, and the philosophy of commander?
Is the reason why the life totals are higher so you can have a longer more interactive game? The ability to play and use more cards from a larger pool? If so then thats a point toward increasing the poison meter.
But what about poison? Why is the meter at 10? Hard to say, but if the reason was specifically to be half as large as the starting life total then its obvious it should probably increase at least philosophically.
Next up - power level. Exactly how strong is infect and toxic? Well honestly that heavily depends on your playgroup. I have personally seen triumph of the hoards win many games. Also, poison and toxic are only powered up with an increase to proliferation cards. Being able to proliferate makes losing to poison seem unavoidable and uninteractable. This point is hard to measure so power level i will leave open.
Lastly is application. How hard would it be for wizards to implement such a rules change? Well i dont know. I have heard before that poison is written on card text as killing on 10, and therefore it causes them ti be hesitant with altering it. I can see an issue there but oracle text does exist for many cards and mechanics. It may cause a headache for wizards but is that headache worth the application?
How often exactly do we see infect?
I feel it is honestly very powerful in mid to lower power environments but i also feel like its semi gentleman’d out of the game. Like land destruction, most understand the negative stigma around infect, and dont play it either to be nice, or to not become archenemy.
But then again that in itself should be an argument as to good and disliked it is, and why it shouldn’t be as good as it is now.
What about more cards like Leeches to balance the effect of poison counters?
I think you guys topped it off great at the end there. I see combo decks in almost every commander night I go to, and due to the 40 life and meta of commander, they usually have a good amount of time to get their combo pieces together. A viable agro strategy in commander is just what the format needs in order to keep everyone at the table on their toes
But for MOST players, turn 5 is way too fast for even aggro decks…
30 damage is too low and too easy to pull off
Didn't we go through this with treasures too. Seems like anytime wotc leans into anything it becomes too strong.
thats what "fire design" is they are going to keep doing this as long as that is their design policy
Treasure is way worse because every deck benefits from treasure. Both for its ramp and because its an artifact and there are so many artifact payoffs that do NOT say non token. A deck that is not a dedicated infect deck is not interested in a couple creatures with infect or toxic.
🤣👌
Edit: On a sad note tho, thats what people have to do in todays society to gain any recognition/traffic. Everything these days has to be the worst, best, scariest, op.. etc. its all a whole load of bs.
I have Atraxa infect/proliferate deck for a while build for 'Arch Enemy NB' deck in my playgroup. Main strategy is to hit everybody at least once for a 1 poison counter and then starts to proliferate like a crazy whole board. I don't play this deck very often because it is always rule 0 conversation if everybody is OK to play against it. And usually even if that's OK for them. It is 1 vs 3 game. Because when you are playing infect you became main threat at the table.
The issue I find is in a format with soo much proliferate, now with such a higher quantity of cards that can deal toxic, players will always draw into these cards and have the ability to start dealing the toxic/infect damage. Before there was not soo many infect creatures so with removal and a 100 card deck it was harder to get the win but now you can be dealing the damage/proliferating every turn mutliple times.
Skittles mono black voltron is hecka easy to win with, so I don’t know what you mean able not be able to draw into the cards! Plus tutors put cards in your hand anyway!
People who thinks infect and poison counters are scary and crying for a nerf are usually people who's set on their personal playstyle and don't like the meta to change. It's an undersupported mechanic that actually provides counters to lifegain and combo decks.
As someone who started playing mtg during the New Phyrexia set, this is the most excited I've been in a looooong time. Can't wait to make some fun decks
Two things about poison counters.
First is that it's not a slap on strategy in most decks. Aside from rare cases like nekusar most decks can't reliably put infect counters across the entire board in a single turn.
The only thing that might make poison too strong is that there are to few ways to remove poison counters. Most counter and superfriends decks are going to run proliferate anyway so if 1 player plays infect the whole table can now proliferate that 1 poison counter and kill that player. Is it a fast kill most likely not but once that first spell is cast its only going to take 3 proliferate cards from the remaining 3 players to have poison kill. But even then a rule change of "poison counters can't be proliferated" would fix the problem better than raising the poison count.
Another aspect to think about is the fact that while players may not have an infect deck, some of the proliferate cards are just lateral cards or even upgrades of already existing cards (Unnatural Restoration vs Regrowth). So even though I may not be doing infect/poison strategy, someone else may be doing it and I can assist in taking out another player by proliferating. IE, there can be up to 2 additional players helping the infect player at the table
unnatural restoration can only return permanents. regrowth can return anything. There's not a single card with proliferate thats on par with the best version of an effect if it didn't proliferate.
@@aspasia3 yeah, but if you're already playing another deck that depends on counters that becomes a reasonable pick over regrowth
nowhere near a reason to nerf infect though
@@Booklat1 It only becomes a problem when the group of decks goes from 1 in the pod to 2 or 3 poison counter decks. The more poison counter players the faster the counters come and that is where the issues will start to surface for the non infect deck players to where it probably will be an issue then. Players will be better off killing the non poison counter players and the more players in the pod with that strategy the faster the kills will happen. Turn 2 kills could easily be a norm in those circumstances for the player not playing infect which will definitely cause them to not want to play that in the future.
Craig giving compleated vibes 😂
As scary as people make out infect to be ask yourself how many times you have actually seen an infect player win a game of commander.
Laughs in fynn the Fangbearer
@@Weenhander I've never seen him win myself
@@codyskater6073 i play with strangers most of the time and it does awesome usually, but it is very tricky to pilot in a way that doesnt leave you vulnerable to getting ganged up on
Twice. I've seen it twice 😂
I've seen an infect player take out another player many times, but actually WIN. Twice.
Right? if Infect was so powerful, how come there's no CEDH infect deck that has won tournaments? 2 card combos and cards that say "I win the game" are the really scary decks!
What u like about the new toxic mechanic is that if you give your creatures trample as long as they deal 1 damage they get to add all their toxic counters.
The format has also changed where 2 drop creatures are much more played. Glistener elf on turn 1 just isn’t the threat it was 4 years ago.
I dunno, the 1-drops basically ‘start the engine.’
I tried taking them out and noticed that the modern deck basically makes proliferate it’s mid to endgame play but it needs at least 1 counter to get going. I see them like the requisite 9 and under count of unblockable creatures in Yuriko. You don’t need them all, but you want at least one to start
I'm a little surprised that a comparison of poison vs commander damage wasn't brought up. Poison is just commander damage that any of your poison causing creatures can apply and can be boosted when you cast proliferate. That reason alone is why I think something should change, be it commander damage or poison # to kill.
Craig needs more air time.
I played the Abzan pre con and it seemed pretty good, but people complained about dying to it on like turn 8-14, I agree with what some are saying about ways to avoid poison counters or removing them because it’d just make new players feel like they aren’t doomed as soon as they get 1.
My problem with infect/poison counters has never been decks dedicated to the strategy, but rather singular cards like Grafted Exoskeleton and Triumph of the Hordes being able to go in nearly any deck (only green ones in the case of Triumph but still), and someone will just suddenly take out another player when they otherwise would have been first or second out.
My group, to prevent this, has poison work like the other main damage-based alternate win condition, Commander Damage. 21 poison is game over. And it's arguably easier to reach than commander damage, since so many cards can apply poison
That's dumb and if you hate in fact because of things like triumph of the hoard and grafted skeleton Then why don't you have a problem with cards like crater hoove. And if you do have a problem with both then the real problem you have is with combo Or the game ending in 6 turns.
Where I play, the store rule is 20, toxic vs infect, infect is bust broken borderline since it's scale and even if creature block it curse blocking creature.
I don't think it needs to be raised. In a 4 player commander game, it's nigh impossible for the Infector to win. Yes, a single player might get knocked out early, but is it any different from other strategies that can push 21+ commander damage by turn 5 even in casual?
If you run toxic an infect and then add proliferate that does make infect a problem at the table
@@heath1948 A problem that can be dealt with via removal, like any other strategy. It’s only really a problem imo if there are 2-3 infect players in your pod which might lead to very early kills against the non-infector(s). Only time will tell how popular infect edh decks become though.
I have made the point about decks having to think about having blockers and more of an early ground game before in response to the entire format and local metas becoming too combo-dependent. Forcing your opponents to think about an early 'ground game' can change the entire calculus of deckbuilding, especially in higher level play where many decks exist only as a 2-card win condition and 97 other cards designed to sandbag until you can find those two cards. Since the community is vehemently against the idea of more bans, advancing aggro strategies is the only real answer for an increasingly combo-centric format.
Good grief "Show me on the doll where the infect player touched you."
The biggest disadvantage of playing poison with proliferate, if that once everyone has like 5 counters, they are all going to kill you and then continue playing a nice friendly game after
Got to have Craig in the Game Knights episode of All will be One
My issue is how little interaction there is with poison counters. There are very few cards that will let you remove counters from a player. Kinda like emblems, once they're in the game there's not much you can do about it.
Poison is an old school magic and is fair play. Commander doesn't make poison more powerful, it actually hurts poison because you have 3 opponents instead of one. The og rule is fine.
Agreed. Unless you take out everyone at once, usually with TotH which is an old card anyway, then you probably knock out 1 person and get focused on. 10 is fine. If it was raised then no one would ever run or want to run poison synergies aside from the toxic stuff that relies of players staying alive with poison counters. The winning via poison counters strat would pretty much be gone.
Unless you're the one person that suddenly loses out of nowhere early on, and have to sit and wait for the game to end. That's the problem with infect - it's too easy to knock one person out quickly and out of nowhere.
You won't be lonely for long because I guarantee the other two will gang up on the infect player after they knock someone out.
@@siobhangraham7280 no one loses "out of nowhere."
agreed
From the experience I've had running my Atraxa praetors voice deck I have been able to kill all the table, by running a bit more laid back and using the sorcerys that give players poison counters and proliferating to death
Edit: should note used the poison precon as a base and upgraded
My biggest problem with Infect has to do with interactivity, or rather the lack thereof. Outside of playing one of the handful of dedicated anti-poison/counters cards like Solemnity or one of the 2 Meliras, once you get 1 counter on you any additional source of poison or proliferate is an inevitable death sentence that you can't do anything about besides pointing every counter/removal spell and combat at the player who is threatening you, which may not even be reasonable anymore due to ONE increasing the visibility of poison as an option and thus increasing the chances of having multiple decks that are on poison at one table. Increasing the required number of poison counters would mitigate this problem, that and/or introducing a generic "anti-proliferate" type effect that can be used to combat poison in a similar way to how life-gain staves off combat damage/burn or shuffle-back effects like Elixir of Immortality or the "shuffle Titans" lets you counteract heavy mill
From 1 counter to 9, poison counters do nothing you have them. Other cards have to do something about those counters to take them to 10, when they finally matter.
And there is a way to deal with every single card that proliferates or would put counters on you.
If you end an EDH game with 7 poison counters, none of them mattered. That’s not too strong compared to a metric ton of other cards and strategies that can win the game much easier as opposed to taking out one player with poison at a time.
if you can't remove the permanents a player is threatening to kill you with, you just remove the player. Its not that complicated. Sometimes you can't and you lose. Thats how the game works.
"pointing every counter/removal spell and combat at the player who is threatening you" is exactly the point though. Every strategy has its counters, and that's one of the counters for infect.
So like every other strategy if you don't interact with them they will beat you.... got it. You should not be able to have tools that just nullify every strategy. It has noting to do with how powerful the mechanic is its that you don't like it. There are 2 card combos that don't get as much hate as Infect. It is no different than any other strategy if you don't interact you will lose. Oh no you got eliminated from the game... that's how the game goes. Someone has to win someone has to lose. You are more likely to lose then win already. Learn to lose.
@@WillisPtheone I suspect the people complaining about infect are the same people who plan to sit there and do nothing for 5 turns straight just to assemble their infinite solitaire otk. God forbid commander actually receive somewhat decent aggro strategies that apply pressure to these types of decks and force them to actually interact with OTHER peoples boards for once
19:51 that is not a sound effect you want to hear while watching at the office LOL
No. Only Blightsteel and Triumph of the Hordes are strong, and those are so easy to ask the playgroup to ban.
I have seen a poison deck win once in 9+ years of commander. My answer would be no. :p
With toxic and proliferate effects if you build the right deck, it could easily kill a table just saying
@@heath1948 Maybe, but it was bad before, might be average now. Wait and see, but I seriously doubt it will ever become anything more than a Meme.
I see Craig, I press like
I wish they would have done more Corrupted cards as it incentivizes players to spread the poison instead of running 1 person down, I loved Ixhels design because it is a much more normal deck than trying to aggro kill 1 person
Keep seeing Rachel more and more episodes! Love it xD
Simp
I think it should go to 13.
12 is a good divisible number. 6 strikes from 2/2 infect or toxic 2, 4 from a 3/3, 3 from a 4/4.
Then +1 due to the increase of the proliferate mechanic.
13 is also a genrealy considered an unlucky number, so it thematically suits the evil nature of poison counters.
Finally it's more incremental than 15 or 20, so if they want to make a change, it will be more subtle, and they can more easily increase it or undo it later.
At min 36 you guys touch on a reason I love aggro strategies so much in commander. Not developing a board state and ramping for three or four turns in a row should have a consequence. I have a Skittles deck and I like to go after green players asap for that reason. I too think toxic will make these decks better. You can have an initial aggro early game plan and then focus on your midrange corrupted payoffs in the mid game, and then dial it up again late game with proliferate. That play pattern of fast, slow, fast, I think will be a fresh take to these decks
As a Boros lover, that's my favorite way to handle over the top decks. Gishath, Sythis, Golos(rip), any other deck that needs to get stopped before they get rolling, aggro makes them slow down and interact.
I prefer the battle cruiser type play of the EDH spectrum. That is why I don't play the other parts of magic anymore since I like to see the big splashy things that can happen with higher mana curves. Aggro is already a huge strategy and very good in the standard, modern, legacy formats that you can play in. Aggro just ruins the EDH format to me and I think should be removed from the format since all of the aggro formats are dying right now.
@@matthewrose8002 Spot on!
@@matthewrose8002 The thing is, if you are a battle cruiser player, you should like aggro players like me. It is the players who play 2-3 spells a turn after getting their ramp and draw engines online and like to combo out that we need to worry about. Does not even have to be infinite combos either. Having aggro decks in the meta is healthy to make those types of players spend time on interaction.
@@dorsalfin22 I play all of the types from cEDH turn 2-3 combo decks, control, precon plus, battle cruisers, etc... I play decks to match the other decks at the table. The battle cruiser games are the most fun since you get to see more card variety. It also has more people who are able to get into that type of deck in terms of expense.
Bring in "cleanse"
If you have a poison counter remove 1.
It'll add a pendulum like effect to have a fighting chance, & would engage/encourage the player to play those cards to remove them.
Can already smell something like coming very soon, War of the Machines, hint-nudge.
Dont know, Melira got far weaker in preventing the spread from a lore perspective, or the new glistening oil is that much more potent.
From a game perspective it´s long overdue. "Target(opponent) player loses all counters" there are 2 cards that do that.
I mean if people are not happy about it, there is always a Rule 0 in a playgroup to rise it 😁
When talking about not banning anything yet before release except for one exception, what was the one exception?
Lutri. A Companion whose requirement is that your deck has to be singleton; banned because that's a non issue in commander so if they didn't ban it every deck with UR in it would be running it as a companion by default.
@@Stinkoman87 oh yeah the Izzet Otter from Ikoria. I forgot
Wonderful video and discussion, as always! Big shoutout to my homie Windows making an appearance at 19:50; can't believe they finally made it on the show! 😂
When I first started playing, it was in Mirrodin Besieged. Infect was the thing, but I didn't know anything about it. As I have grown as a player, I always had a place for infect in my heart. With the newest set, I like that infect is the "new" strategy for commander. Whilst it was possible, it was unreliable.
I always enjoy seeing Mr. Blanchette on the CZ videos!
19:52 windows notification sound made me super happy 😂
It wasn't really the poison counters, it was Infect itself. Mostly revolving around 2 cards, Blightsteel Colossus and Triumph of the Hordes which almost always come out of nowhere leaving you no chance to respond or prepare.
I mean, don't overwhelming stampede and craterhoof behemoth do the very same? Hell, I've seen Master of Cruelties close out games faster than Blightsteel.
By that logic, Trample is too broken and should be removed (Craterhoof Behemoth). One or two cards is not a whole strategy...
@@homeflakes that's what I'm saying!
Just like war of the spark added more planeswalkers and made superfriends pretty good I think this helps that strategy and infect which is a good thing as keeping diverse is not bad
If I may can I restate the problem as I don't feel that my concerns were addressed in this episode. Poison can be interacted with (proliferated) by multiple players which is different than commander damage. When multiple players use poison counters or proliferate it moves the goalpost to much. I just lost a game t4 because the other 3 players basically only had to add 3.33 poison counters to me each. It is not the agro versions that scare me it is the control variants that will take advantage of the meta shift more. Many players at our LGS are now shifting to winning to poison to take advantage of this new meta. 24 out of yesterday's 30 decks had an ability to add a poison counter which has never happened before. I added 20 cards to my atraxa poison deck so I think that one has improved poison by at least 40%
If anything, more counter removal. That could counter poison counters if it is too powerful, and also removing any other counters now
1 or two mana, remove a specific counter or any counter, the amount of mana determining that like various counter spells being priced out.
Just have a reverse proliferate effect. Everything will be fine then and you could also use it to counter someone's experience counters or energy counters.
The issue becomes it needs to be useful counters removal besides that. Since there’s no side board/one round games and you don’t want to always run X deck against Y deck.
If you are making cards that run counters removal that everyone has to start running to make sure they can avoid toxic/infect and that’s all they do it’s a dead card. If it at least decent with another upside it’s better, but you also don’t want to make even more deck staples.
@@BlueGriffin20 Thats why it needs to be able to remove counters from permeants as well. Loyalty, +1/+1, charge counters, anything else and it will be an option.
I am all for alternative win cons. Games have to end and if somebody manages to poison the whole table, that actually sounds like a pretty exciting game to me where most likely, a number of insane plays happened :)
I was distracted, did they say anything about stacking toxic and infect.
A 4/4 toxic 1 double strike go in for combat damage and throw down tainted strike lol
IMO. I believe we should definitely take into account that Proliferate is ridiculously strong, not just for upping Infect counters, but Planeswalker loyalty as well. With Phyrexians becoming more prevalent in the sets to come. Infect strategies are going get stronger and more popular than ever. A rules change may not be needed now, but perhaps later as long as Proliferate gets more support.
Anyone who thinks that the rule should change to more than 10 poison counters is just wrong. Poison just isn't a strong or scary strategy. Play a couple more removal cards.
At the end of the day, the single scariest thing in this set is Venerated Rotpriest. Toxic gives redundancy, toxic + proliferate will work the same as infect + proliferate... But that new creature is pure evil to be killed on the spot
Seriously. I mean, it’s going in the Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief… but yes, you should 100% get rid of it.
The Proliferate looks so much scarier - you can get it on your mana ramp, removal and even some value cards. Can easily give out 4-5 counters to the table out of cards that were not in dedicated Wincon slots. Also we will likely get more toxic and proliferate in March of the Machine.
@@MarvelOfRain Yes, but at least is a flexible mechanic, that can be used in a number of different strategies even without toxic/infect. Is it scary in this set? Yes, but not as scary as turn 1 Rotpriest, IMO
@@Jessthree Yup, that's the first commander i thought of when i read that card
my take here playing infect, if two or more are playing infect in a commander night I think the count should be 15 or maybe 20 depending (maybe a toxic factor per infect number of decks?) if there is ONLY one player using infect gets REALLY hard to stack up counters across the table, so 10 is still a challenging goal
i don't think the infect rules really need to change. the worse thing is that usually the infect player takes out one opponent really fast and then the other two gang up on them and take them out just as fast. yes you can proliferate the counters but the same thing happens, the players gang up and you lose.
thats the problem. It kills one player, then the game stagnates, or the infect player dies and the game stagnates. It is the "Fuck you in particular" of commander decks.
@@ottekitfun9626 And how often does that happen until people realise it's not very fun to have it at the table and just stop bringing it? The community can sort it out without rules changes.
Tell that to The One player that dies to infect first.
@@MrMarnel True though ideally WotC would balance it so that the community doesn't have to. I'm not an infect player but it'd be nice for both them to have their mechanic they like and everyone else's game to not get lame, which seems like it should be possible...
That is the way it was not the way it now is
I still don't think poison is that strong in commander, aside from combo or triumph of the hordes, and the good old buff the infect monster and give it trample (none of which needs to be on a dedicated infect deck), nothing has changed much, the thing is that most commander players are on the casual side and just don't like the pressure of poison counters, just like milling strategies it isn't really that strong and most of the times it just tilts people.
15 Poison counters would be ok I think . Because It would let you a chance against A Blightsteel colossus with haste...
The only reason infect might need changing is if it becomes so popular that 2-3 players per pod end up consists you playing infect/toxic decks. As long as it's 1 per pool it's still not great but the. But the strength scales with the number of players playing that deck type.
That's a good point to be fair - and not something I've thought of prior. We've got a guy at our local game store whom plays a Golgari Infect Deck, but aside from him, I can't think of another player that regularly plays an Infect Deck (not just 'Triumph of the Hordes' or 'Grafted Exoskeleton' as a win con within another Deck with an alternative main theme, but an Infect Aggro/Proliferate Deck designed to get three other players to ten poison counters as the main strategy of the Deck). Just as is addressed in the video, he regularly knocks out a single player and equally rarely wins a game. As the only Infect player at the table, his Deck attracts a lot of hate early on and generally loses
traction towards the mid-to-late game.
However, should two, even three of the players be playing decks that use Poison Counters as a main win con (and these decks are tuned, with decent proliferate support, solid mana base and rocks, thought out curve, staple win cons such as Triumph, Grafted Exoskeleton etc), the lethality of the game is increased by magnitudes and as the non-infect player at the table that would be very difficult to navigate and would leave you very vulnerable.
Still, I'd rather die after Four Turns to an Infect Bloodbath than after Thirteen Turns against a Stax Player whom has denied all of my resources, costed me out of the game and has chipped away at me to a slow, grinding but inevitable loss. There are certainly some other strategies that have much more support that I'd argue even with the new Phyrexia: All Will Be One additions still make the game much more inhospitable and miserable for current players (that aren't being looked at with the vitriol that Infect/Toxic/Poison is).
@@bengillett5531 yeah I agree with you on all points here. I think for a short period of time infect and toxic will flood the play space and it will feel overwhelming but with time that will pass and it will be brought back to where it is today just with a bit more support and with that support to make it at least viable. Because right now infect doesn't win.
My first deck was Atraxa infect and i was really stoked to see ONE come up with toxic and as Craig said, i replaced A LOT of cards in that deck and made it less control and more in your face and aggro. Before that it really was in this wierd limbo where you need to infect everyone and then pray for drawing enough prolif to finish the whole table. Now it has clear identity of aggro deck... and I love it.
Please dont change it CRC.
If it changes, then it is a slippery slope IMO. Are cards like Shadowborn Apostle, Relentless Rats ect. Facing the same problem ? It has always been that the rules on the card takes the president to the standard rules…so changing poison would be a direct violation to that philosophy. So only if the count goes up on the poison rule in general, then it should NOT change
So yall mentioned that too many or too power proliferate card may exist or may be a problem in the near future. How much did super friends and counters matter deck get improved?
They got some new toys but the mana value of Planeswalkers themselves prohibit abuse. Adding counters to creatures is not as crazy as infect either and has been around a while
does stacking infect on a toxic creature work? like say for example that new phyrexian dinosaur equiped with exoskeleton?
I don't see why not
yes, infect stacks with toxic, as do multiple instances of toxic
They need to print more cards that Remove poison counters
I don’t mind poison counters, I just hate infect. Infect is just better commander damage that isn’t limited to one card. Honestly, I would say that if infect itself was banned, I’d be more than happy to see new poison cards printed. Toxic is a very nice way of handling it.
Video starts at 4:32
Doing the lord’s work.
Thank you
I don't personally think Infect is a problem. I've played Infect, and I've only one once with a real infect deck. Triumph of the Hordes and Blightsteel are what people talk about with Infect. I have only won 2, maybe 3 times with an Infect deck, but I've won several times because of Blightsteel or Triumph of the Hordes, but Blightsteel is an 11 mana spell, and Triumph is just OverRun.exe. We should definetly see these cards in the wild first
I agree with the CZ team, it's not really infect/toxic that's the problem but instead the proliferate support
proliferate when i proliferate is the new draw when i draw
This I can agree with, proliferate is going to be problematic for a lot more than poison.
I still think 10 is wayyy to low its too easy to one shot someone with poison what I didn't hear is that its not typically just one creature that has infect its 2-5 if not more where they each can deal poison counters which is super powerful i was once in a game where the infect player was playing atraxa and had like 12 creatures with infect or poisonous and he cast a cyclonic rift and cast something that gave all his creatures +12/+12 and double strike and killed everyone in one turn twice over
@@thes1lv3rwolf27 its not 10, its 30, on 1v1 you deal 10 poison and win, on commander, to win with poison you need to deal 30
@@thes1lv3rwolf27 I don’t think that argument deals with infect at all. Seems like the problem is cyclonic rift
My play groups rule is 20 poison counters, its made it pretty fair we feel. Benn running it that way since infect lol.
Unless you are running an Isochrom Sceptor imprinted with Prologue of Phyresis, then I think 20 poison counters would be too much (currently my LGS has that rule). At a maximum, I'd say 15 would be okay-ish. Overall, the theme is a lot stronger now but is also that "kill on sight" commander deck. Maybe more data needs to be collected before a decision could be made.
I think infect and posion counters should be a bit like commander damage each player has their own count for each player rather than 1 person dealing you 7 and another player dealing you 3 and you dying the player that dealt you 7 is 1 count and the player that dealt you 3 is another count aswell
players are good at spoting problems with the game but are bad at giving ideas of have to fix it
I am just curious if they will ever create a card that can remove poison counters
They did it's a really old card called leeches
There is one card that does from Homelands, Leeches... It was called a mistake by Wizards...
Suncleanser
There are several card that remove counters from players and the white enchantment that prevents players from getting counters
06:35 what is that exception Josh is referring to?
In my play group we changed the number of required poison counters from 10 to 21 to match commander damage. The only way to combat infect otherwise was to target then infect player which is just isn’t a fun experience.
But with the introduction of toxic we’re going to revisit it
Good idea though
Taking damage can be overcome by gaining more life.
Milling cards from a person's deck can be reversed by cards that can return other cards back to the deck ,the hand, and the battlefield .
Minus one counters and plus one counters cancel each other.
What is used to reverse the putting of poison counters on a player at this time?
The problem is there are now cards that give all your opponents one poison counter for just casting a spell, and then all you have to do from there is start proliferating. No need to attack just use all the proliferate support(old and new) thats out there and you can potentially kill all your opponents in just a few turns.
So in my opinion 10 poison counters in commander is too few especially if more then one player is playing a similar strat, then its just whoever can proliferate the fastest wins in that situation.
There is 3 new cards that give poison counter by casting them
Man, its 30, not 10 what you talking about? XD on a 1v1 format like modern, you need to deal 10 poison dmg to win, on commander, you need to deal 30, you suggesting to change it to 60. So on all other formats its 10 poison i win the game, you want to change from 10 to 60? wtf XD
Commander poison needs to be 10xThe amount of oppnents.
Or possibly if you want to do 20 then you could do 5xthe number of players.
And it would be set at the start of the game.
@@P3rvenc I dont know where your getting 30 poison counters from. The official ruling is you get 10 poison counters per player in commander you loose.
@@thedanath do you even math kido? On 1v1 format, how many poison counters you need to deal to WIN? 10, its 10. How many poison counters you need to deal on commander to WIN? 30, its 30. I think you are playing by the wrong rule if you think that after one person gets 10 poison counters the game ends, you need to deal a total of 30 poison to win on commander, not 10.
I don't like cards being banned in Commander, and strongly disagreed with the recent Golos ban, but I do think the instant-kill Infect cards (Triumph of Hordes, Tainted Strike, Blightsteel, Grafted Exoskeleton, Phyresis) are potential problems. They're a noob trap; I see newer players putting them into random decks with no other Infect, only to be confused when an opponent gets salty. Newer players often don't know about Rule 0 discussions and the stigma of Infect.
I resonated so strongly with Craig's comment about infect being good at either aggroing out one player or getting to 5 or 7 on other players and then losing haha. It was just hard to get any card or mana value apart from poison counters. But all this proliferate support (a little worried about the superfriends themes now), but now it is time to brake down my Fynn deck and brew a new simic ezuri "tickle you with poison and watch you proliferate to death" deck!
White green combo will be even stronger now with this strategy. So for tokens and ramp, I think yes on increasing. Proliferate is easier now too an can be done multiple times now too.
The only concern I have is the toxic environment Wizards of the Coast is creating in mtg (pun and double entendre as intended)
Here is what Poisonous reads from Sabertooth Cobra:
"Whenever Sabertooth Cobra deals damage to a player, that player gets a poison counter. The player gets another poison counter at the beginning of their next upkeep unless they pay 2 before that step. (A player with ten or more poison counters loses the game.)"
So: Infect can scale with a creature's Power. Toxic only deals Toxic N damage, where N is the number next to the trigger. Poisonous deals 1 point of Poison, but a player can pay 2 generic mana before their upkeep to prevent that second point of Poison damage from a Poisonous creature.
That being said, I think that's the fix for Poison damage as a game state rule/win condition: At the beginning of a player's upkeep, that player may pay 2 to remove a poison counter. A player may pay this cost any number of times.
Another solution is similar to Luminarch Ascension, where it could be a permanent card like an Enchantment. This could be a hypothetical card the Rules Committee could recommend as well:
Name: Cure For The Sickness
Cost: 1/W
Rarity: Uncommon
Supertype: Enchantment - Aura
Text: Enchant Player. At the end of each player's turn, put an Antidote counter on Cure For The Sickness. At the beginning of enchanted player's upkeep, they may pay W and remove X Antidote counters. If the enchanted player does, that player removes X Poison counters from themselves.
Note: The card above is just one idea that could be implemented to deal with the speed at which a player can be defeated by poison damage. The same is true for an addition to Poison that allows players to be able to pay mana and be able to remove Poison counters.
Edit: Poisonous is actually read as Poisonous N, which is what Toxic is. The two cards with Poisonous are Snake Cult Initiation (Poisonous 3) and Virulent Sliver (Poisonous 1).
I hope Craig is in the all will be one game knights episode
is there any cleansing spells? i mean the answer for spells to lose life are ones to gains life, draw card spells and effects the counter are discard spells, mill effects have shuffle your graveyard in your library. if you make an excessive of toxic/infect/poison creatures and spells one would think you'd make something that would or could help against. just doesn't sound like a rules issue sounds more like a designer issue.
It'll be fine for a while. Maybe raise it in a couple years if they give it another batch of support. But even then, don't change anything until we actually see the extent of its popularity.
for verification at the start when they said they waited before banning stuff except for 1 card... im assuming that was Lutri?