Should Poison Counters Be Removable?
General forum
Posted on Oct. 27, 2021, 8:46 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
Mark Rosewater has said that he does not want poison counters to be removable, but I severely dislike that, since everything in this game should have an answer, and antidotes exist in actuality.
Some players have been wishing for ways to remove planeswalker emblems, which I dislike, but, if they can wish for that, I say that I can wish for a way to remove poison counters.
What does everyone else say about this? Should poison counters be removable?
Leeches is a card that already exists. It is an old card but you can indeed remove poison counters. Whether or not we see more cards that can do it in the future is another question, but given the amount of effects that add poinson counters, I think it would be good to see one or two effects that can remove them.
October 27, 2021 8:58 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #4
Suncleanser is a card, that already can remove poison counters. From your enemies though, you can't save yourself. Solemnity and Melira, Sylvok Outcast will stop you from acquiring more, and Karn Liberated's ultimate should reset your poison count too.
I think things like this, that completely cancel out entire specific strategies, should be handled with care. Like cards that prevent gaining life. Like The Immortal Sun for planeswalkers. These things are powerful, and should be treated as such.
The only reason I see to print new ones, would be to solve a problem that infect poses, that can't be solved by cards we have (removal for the infect creatures, fog effects, etc.)
What I kinda would like to see though, is anti-proliferate. Removing 1 counter from any number of permanents and players, instead of adding 1. Which would work in fighting Infect, and be a very slow answer to planeswalkers, but just incidentally, not on purpose.
October 28, 2021 5:06 a.m.
wallisface says... #5
I like the reverse-proliferate idea plakjekaas mentioned above. But as far as a card that specifically removes poison counters, this feels like a bad design decision, for a few reasons:
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It’s a card that would never really see play (at the moment), because there’s just not enough of a reason for anyone to be that skittish about poison.
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If they printed poison-giving cards strong enough that you need to be using cards to remove them, then WotC have f**ked up somewhere in the card design process, and that poison-giving card’ll likely get banned, bringing us back to the first bullet-point.
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Thematically, we want different kinds of effects to actually feel different to one another, and the current state of poison being permanent helps to differentiate itself from just being identical to having a second life-counter.
October 28, 2021 5:42 a.m.
TriusMalarky says... #6
I think infect is a weird and feel-bad mechanic that wizards definitely won't be reusing anytime in the near future so there's almost no reason it would ever happen.
Also, there's like four good infect cards, one of which is a mini Craterhoof with no body, another one is unblockable, and another is a 1/1 for 1 with infect and we all know why those are good. The mechanic is barely relevant, seeing fringe play in modern and the occasional Triumph in EDH.
I just don't think it matters either way.
October 28, 2021 11:32 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #7
The 4th one is a land, and the honorable mention for commander is an equipment
For completeness :D
October 28, 2021 12:05 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #8
They already are? Also, for more specifically yourself, Leeches.
October 28, 2021 5:57 p.m. Edited.
DemonDragonJ says... #9
TypicalTimmy, yes, I know about those cards, but Leeches is extremely old, and the other one affects only opponents, not one's self.
October 28, 2021 8:57 p.m.
Have you ever played infect? As someone who has, I gotta tell you. Infect is very weak, whatever is the version you think of.
Whenever I play with my friends, I'm always the first one to get targeted because they're are so afraid of Infect. And guess what? The only time I won, after being targeted so much, was because we we're playing Planechase. Infect has no way of applying pressure aside from a "combo" kill on turn 2, or turn 3 tops.
Now for an example of the other way around. I was once playing on a 5 person kitchen table with someone playing a competitive modern Infect. Because I play Infect, I knew he would do basically nothing the first few turns, since these decks don't run a lot of creatures and thus can't afford to keep attacking when playing against multiple people, so I focused against the player who was the biggest threat. After the "archenemy" was dealt with, I just used politics to take out the infect player because I know how much people fear it.
People "dislike" Infect just because it says a player loses the game. In the end, it's just a strategy that is a "alternative" wincondition that crumbles if you apply just a bit of pressure.
October 29, 2021 7:23 a.m.
plakjekaas says... #11
Infect is terrifying because it's so much easier to count to 10 instead of 20/40. It has been powerful and overly present in Modern, In constructed 1v1 where there's only one player whose interaction you need to stop. I think it stopped being very relevant around the time Fatal Push was printed?
Anyway, in commander you still need to survive the interaction of three other players, and have to count to 10 two more times after you've killed an opponent and established yourself as someone dangerous who needs to be dealt with. Outside of Skittles (Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon) who insinuates his game plan before the game even started and is therefor not that dangerous and easy to anticipate, and maybe Atraxa, Praetors' Voice who can do cute things like proliferate the counters for inevitabe kills, there's barely any valid infect commander strategies, outside of oneshotting people with one-time effects like Triumph of the Hordes or Tainted Strike.
The only infect card I play is Inkmoth Nexus in my equipment deck, because that's a scary land with an easy-equipped Colossus Hammer. Any card that would remove infect counters, would come too late for any opponent that I infected. That's probably why people don't see the need for a Vampire Hexmage for players.
Antidotes do exist in real life, but this is not just any infection we're dealing with. This is Phyresis, a magical infection to remove organical impurities and leave nothing but the perfect life form. It's a lot more potent than penicillin ;-)
October 29, 2021 9:55 a.m.
If poison counters are removable, it should be as a cost, not as anti-poison counters. I'm thinking something like "As an additional cost to cast this spell, remove a poison counter from target opponent. That player discards two cards." or "You may remove two poison counters from target opponent rather than pay this spell's mana cost." The words "target opponent" are key; only a rare or mythic rare, if anything, would allow you to pull them from yourself.
That way, it's not just life gain lite. It converts the poison counters into another resource, offering you more options and bringing the opponent deeper under your control at the cost of being further from absolute victory. And really, isn't that what original Phyrexia's all about?
October 29, 2021 10:16 a.m.
But that's the thing people don't realise. It looks terrifying, but it isn't. Counting to 10 is easier than 20/40, but with the quality of infect creatures? Not so much. The best Infect creature, in itself, is Phyrexian Crusader, which, ironically, has some protection from Fatal Push. However, basically every other Infect creature dies to a list of things. Examples are Lightning Bolt, Abrade, Lightning Helix, Path to Exile, Declaration in Stone, Abrupt Decay and probably a bunch more I'm forgetting.
Infect has only been "overly" present when Blazing Shoal was a thing in Modern. After its banning, Infect just became of the fringiest deck to linger in the format. It has definitely had some top8s but when is the last time you heard some had to sideboard against Infect? To use some data as argument, if you go to mtgTop8 and search for in Infect in Modern, you'll see a lot of decks but most of them, at least from 2020/2021, got 4th place of below.
Also, Hammer Time is a deck that's good with Infect, but honestly doesn't even need it. And Ornithopter, or any creature, with +10/+10 is enough to win games because the hammer is waaaaay more resilient than a creature.
legendofa, I kinda liked your ideia of removing counters to activate an ability or cast a spell
October 29, 2021 10:21 a.m.
While I dont like poison counters, but i think its only problematic in EDH. I think there should be a way to remove the counters so they can release stronger infect cards and also since there is already a card that removes them but its really old. My fix honestly is to reprint that card or reword infect/poisonous to "when a player has poison counters equal to half of their starting life total, that player loses the game." This way it only nerfs it in EDH and other formats stay the same for the reword and that card becomes usable in modern. Personally I like both options.
October 29, 2021 8:11 p.m.
Grubbernaut says... #15
Infect isn't competitively viable, and I think an official rules change to sate the folks who "just dislike it" wouldn't be a good look. Rule zero reigns supreme, in general, for me.
October 29, 2021 8:41 p.m.
TriusMalarky says... #16
Infect is not good in EDH like, at all. There's one card, and it's only good because Overrun effects are always pretty good in EDH. The rest are fringe playable gimmick cards at best, even if they are pretty good gimmick cards.
We don't need to see the infect mechanic ever again, and so we don't need to change it at all.
Grubbernaut says... #2
I think it'd be "fine," but it really doesn't matter; I'd actually like to see infect be playable again in modern, and in EDH, you're virtually always going to be knocking players out in one swing if you're using infect. Nobody would sideboard an anti-player-counters card in modern, either, so... I feel like if it were modern-legal, it'd be an actively bad decision, and if it was only in eternal formats, it'd be pointless.
So I guess, if its presence would please people, why not?
October 27, 2021 8:49 p.m.