Why Does Mark Rosewater not Want Players to Remove Poison Counters?
General forum
Posted on Aug. 22, 2025, 10:15 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
I may have already asked about this subject, but, in these two posts, Mark Rosewater stated that he does not wish for players to be able to remove poison counters, but I dislike that attitude, since I believe that there is no logical reason for which that should be the case, since the ability to cure poison is very common in fantasy stories, and antidotes do exist in actuality, plus, as time passes, poison shall eventually become so powerful that the designers shall have no choice but to allow removal of poison counters, unless they make an active effort to restrict the power level of poison counters. I personally hope that, when Rosewater eventually retires, other, newer employees of WotC reverse his policy about poison counters, since I cannot see any other way to prevent them from becoming too powerful.
What does everyone else say, about this? Why is Mark Rosewater so strict about players not being able to remove poison counters? I certainly am interested to hear your thoughts, on this matter.
Reading this post, I was surprised that Rosewater is still employed at WoTC. It must be like a clubhouse where people just walk around with their shoes off and joke about their weekend exploits. I can't remember the last time I thought the design of a set was good, or added something positive to standard.
August 22, 2025 10:56 p.m.
KaraZorEl Out of curiosity, what are you looking for that would give a set good design, and what would add something positive to Standard?
August 23, 2025 12:45 a.m. Edited.
I'd like to see a return to the old ways when enemy colors were actually enemies, instead of just anything goes. Or perhaps another set like Planar Chaos where black is taking extra turns, blue is being aggro, and red is using counterspells. That would be interesting.
But, in the absence of that, I'd really like to move away from super-powerful mythics and expensive card packs (ie, collector boosters) that lock people out of competitive play who don't have money. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is one example.
Modern Horizons 3 was so badly designed that it was basically a format rotation, due to how everyone was suddenly using the new cards like Grief and Fury. I'd like to see an end to casting spells for no mana, even if there is a draw back.
Assassin's Creed was a fun set, but outside of Commander and casual, I can't think of what use it might have had. Peter Parker's mythic looks broken in half with the web-slinging ability to put any legendary from your hand into play for Bant mana.
Magic is already, and has been for a while, a pay-to-win cardboard gacha (the free phone games you see everywhere where you making drawings with gems) that, to some extent (but not always) disregards skill in favor of unbalanced design.
I remember the days when Mahotmi Djinn was a rare. Now, he's an uncommon at best. Everything is incredibly pushed. To me, adding to new sets would be subtracting. Doing less, having less powerful things, having more balance, that's what I would try to accomplish. Perhaps starting with abolishing mythic rares.
I doubt any of these things come off as being reasonable or feasible. But those are my thoughts.
August 23, 2025 1:30 a.m.
KaraZorEl Have you checked out the Old-school 93/94 or Premodern formats, or maybe Pauper?
The original Ravnica sets pretty much broke down the mechanical ally/enemy dichotomy. There's still the philosophical conflict, but that's really fallen off for the cards. Once in a while something like Sanctifier en-Vec or Change the Equation comes around. I think the developers just decided there was more useful space in exploring all color combinations, instead of only allies. How do you feel about cards like Soltari Guerrillas or Mystic Snake? And I'd like to see another Planar Chaos-style set.
Big money cards, yeah, that's an issue. Competitive Magic is getting really hard to transition into if you're not willing to spend on cardboard. My old car was worth less than most Modern decks.
Unfortunately, power creep, and moreso here complexity creep, is a fact of life in TCGs, since the alternatives are stagnation and regression. There's only so many parallel designs and side-grades you can do. And I would argue that M:tG has done really good in controlling power creep compared to other major TCGs. There's actually a ton of failed games that powercrept themselves out of existence within months--they couldn't keep up with themselves. For the Mahamoti Djinn, those early sets had no rarity balance. The Djinn was a rare, and is an underwhelming uncommon today. Lightning Bolt was a common, and it's too strong for Standard and a staple pretty much everywhere shows up. Demonic Tutor and Celestial Prism were both uncommon.
Modern Horizons sets just succeeded too well. They were designed to shake up the format a little bit, and ended up redefining it. Mission accomplished? But I think I saw somewhere that they aren't planning on any more direct-to-Modern sets in the near future.
None of this is meant to invalidate your thoughts, just offer another perspective. I'm learning that I tend to have a pretty permissive attitude toward what the game can offer me. Of course, there are absolutely things I would change if I could (six new sets per year is way too much, settings can get super cramped in only one set--I have no idea what happened on Kaldheim), but in general, I don't have any strong reactions to what's being put out. I do have a line on what I think is unreasonable, and the game hasn't hit it yet for me.
August 23, 2025 2:57 a.m.
All, please remember to stay on topic. This thread is about poison counters; it is not for complaining about Rosewater in general. If you wish to discuss another topic, please do so in a new thread, rather than hijack this one.
August 24, 2025 3:54 a.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #9
Poison counters in general are supposed to have a sense of violation to them.
September 15, 2025 3:01 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #11
He's said it himself. When you get even one poison counter, you're poisoned! It's not coming off, some cards care about this (which, yes, Zendikar had Vampire Lacerator and friends, but you don't trigger them at 18 life), and it can be made even worse by proliferate, even if most of us just prefer Giant Growth effects. The -1/-1 counters also feel like Torture and that's the whole point.
The problem is that it worked too well: Infect was a Tier 2 deck when in Standard, and at least in multiplayer Commander, it basically lets you remove one player before you die, but it was probably as salty as aggro gets. (Not for nothing last year's salt score ranking on EDHRec included Tainted Strike, Phyresis, and Blighted Agent as the third, fourth, and fifth saltiest commons.)
September 18, 2025 4:29 p.m.
wallisface says... #12
As others have already stated - poison is meant to act as a point-of-difference between life-total. Being able to remove them files directly in the face of that. It's a silly argument.
legendofa says... #2
I think the idea is to keep it from being a second life total, like how the exile zone is less accessible so that it doesn't become simply a second graveyard. And while infect decks show up once in a while, they haven't taken a big chunk of any meta for a while.
Poison counters also show up very infrequently. There were none from 1996 (Suq'Ata Assassin) to 2010 (Scars of Mirrodin), and none from 2011 (New Phyrexia) to 2021 into 2023 (Fynn, the Fangbearer, Phyrexia: All Will Be One). They only appear in significant numbers when Phyrexia's in power, and that's not going to happen again for a while, so I'm not too worried about the takeover of poison, at least on the near future. And if poison does become oppressive, bans seem to be the most common regulation of unexpectedly powerful strategies. If poison gets stronger, I expect at least a few other strategies to get stronger in parallel.
As far as flavor goes, I agree. But the developers have apparently decided that in this case, gameplay outweighs flavor, and poison antidotes are nowhere to be found.
August 22, 2025 10:53 p.m.