Pointed Discussion

Just in time I guess, Online really needs it to counter all this new poison :/

I am 100% sure that the next Mirrodin set will have plenty of ways to remove counters.
Wizards be trolling.

Maro hates this card.

This card is a blight on the game.

Reprint. For the love of god, reprint.

According the what i've read, wizerds plans to make poison permanent, which is mainly why i hate it. I personally love infinite combos, particularly infinite life, and then proceed to win with a chimney imp or a land-casted Emrakul. Poison simply kills that idea.

It is easier to use this in a offensive fashion now that there are two white infect creatures.
I find in interesting that for all Maro's hate, this still made it into ME.

@Kryptnyt

Yes wizards please hire that guy.

That lava dude should be 2 cmc and R T remove 1 to deal 2 Damage.

And Give yourself poision counters for ammo for certain Abilitys//spells. That sounds like a very fun idea. Stallbond is a Bit costly to just use as a hardcoutner with a drawback. Maby make it Counterspell Range {U}{U} with 2 poison counters, that would be beatiful.

And how bought an anti proliferate?
Remove 1 counter of each type from any perms and players of your choosing. That cant hit emblems btw emblems live in commander zones.

more remove poison.
If I have to lose the game every time a blightsteel colossus hits the table (which it does. In round 5. Every *** time.) with whispersilk cloak (usually the round after, but who the *** cares, he's now attacking and unblockable and 11/11 infect and shroud) for the rest of eternity I have a simple recipie for myself.
No more magic.
The latest powercreep has done nothing but suck the fun out of the game :/

I could careless whoever thinks of poison as a second life total.... REPRINT THE CARD!!! I'm so sick of poison in standard. Poison, poison, POISON!!! So annoying!

@wickedragon

1. poison removal wouldn't help in the slightest if you got hit by a whispersilked blightsteel colossus. and if it happens EVERY turn 5... may i reccomend revoke existance, or steel sabotage?

Amazing in standard.

Oh, wait.

This card should be reprinted, or at least give us a way to remove poison. For all of you complaining that we shouldn't be allowed to remove poison, I cannot count how many times I have read in the articles on this site that magic is one of the best games because if there is a rule, then there is a card that breaks it. That is what makes the game great, so not having a way to remove poison counters is kinda a contradiction to what this games roots are based on, dontcha think?

P.S. Having a platinum angel or something similar gets around that 11 with infect. if you cant lose they can poison all day.

They should make removal for poison, even if it costs a lot to cast or use. There are many easy ways to get poison counters on people and sure, you can bolt one of the creatures, or doom...oh wait, they're mostly black. 1B for Phyresis, suddenly your low cost high powered attackers can punch a sizable hole in another player. And if they are not killed with that, there are many other ways such as cheap proliferate Throne of Geth to give players more poison counters. Even in standard with all the low cost equipment and other artifacts.

If you were to say this is like another life total, it already is, you have 10 life without life gain. There is no way to stop it once its on you except with Leeches. Once you move out of standard, infect becomes more and more broken. Many people don't agree of course, but infect can be used for a quicker death than most other creatures based dmg decks.

The design team has said that they hate this card, it will never be reprinted. I agree, standard needs some poison hate, but this is not the solution. They would print a card that says "Restore your life to twenty" for three mana and they won't do it again, which is essentially what this says. This card would be in most sideboards that run white, because if you drop it late game infect is screwed, unless youre running shape anew into blightsteel (Which I do, its my favorite deck)

@wickedragon:

I know what you're saying, but the colossus doesn't win every game - anything but. Most people who run the Selective Memory/Shape Anew combo focus entirely on getting it out, so they can't deal with problems like large flying creatures. Thus, whenever I get my 11/11 with infect out 5th turn, my opponent kills it before I can attack. Either that, or, in the situation you described with Whispersilk Cloak, they just hit me with something unblockable because I was spending all my mana on getting Mr. 11/11 out.

So, no, he's not ruining the game.

Oh, and I agree, wizards. Hire Krypktnt. I once made a planeswalker that had -2: you gain 4 life and 2 poison counters.

I just did my first weekly blog on the topic of poison removal on my Wizards Community profile, check it out!

http://community.wizards.com/planarsibling/blog/2011/04/11/poison:_does_it_need_some_hate

Would be cool to be able to remove poison counters to pay costs. like...
Acidic Gauntlets {2}
Artifact-Equipment
Equip {2}
Remove a poison counter from yourself; put a +1/+1 counter on equipped creature. It gains deathtouch until end of turn.
or;
Pyrrhic Lavamancer {R}
Creature- Human Wizard
{R}, {T}, remove two poison counters from yourself; This does 2 damage to target creature or player.
also;
Stallbond {2}{U}
Instant
Counter target spell. If you do, you may remove it from the game.
You get two poison counters.
Stuff like that! Hire me Wizards!

@Thewrathofshane;
The lavamancer I made is supposed to be reminiscent of Grim lavamancer ;)

"Just for the record, this card shouldn't exist. It was a mistake of Wizards. Like my friend puts it, "If you can get rid of poison, then what's the point? It just becomes a second life total." Totally true if you think about it. We wouldn't be afraid of poison anymore if cards like this were reprinted. I'm kinda glad that poison is headed in a deadly direction ;)"

No. Infect was a mistake of Wizards. I don't care, Infect is the most broken mechanic in existence and within it is the single most broken creature; Hand of the Praetors. If even counterspelling (a mechanic which has run scarce in standard anyway) won't stop you from getting a poison counter, then it's just overpowered for any kind of fair game. There's far less skill or strategic talent behind using Infect. Wither was fine; this is just stupid. PLEASE Wizards, PLEASE reprint this, and make everyone's day by creating an "anti-Infect" Planeswalker.

Rant over.

Just for the record, this card shouldn't exist. It was a mistake of Wizards. Like my friend puts it, "If you can get rid of poison, then what's the point? It just becomes a second life total."

Totally true if you think about it. We wouldn't be afraid of poison anymore if cards like this were reprinted. I'm kinda glad that poison is headed in a deadly direction ;)

EDIT:
"There is so little backwards progress in either life loss or poison accumultation, that they are practically indistinguishable."
Now that is just wrong thinking. What would be the point of poison if it worked almost identical to a normal life total!? That would make the game boring. That totally defeats the purpose of the mechanic.

Creatures with poison or infect already cost more mana to cast. Your opponents are already overpaying for their creatures. Printing cards that hose the poision mechanic would just make the game dull. There wouldn't be any sense of urgency. "Oh it doesn't matter if I get up to 9 poison counters, I have this magic card to bring it back down."

And on a last note, cards that are printed to specifically hose a mechanic usually turn out to be really terrible. Cards specific to destroying posion? I can't think of anything more boring and unorigional as that.

I think the logic "if you make cards that remove poison counters, it just becomes a second lifetotal" went out the door when they had the BRILLIANT idea to make poison damage-based. This was never the case in the past, hense why this card wasn't a mistake at all; it translated the poison into damage, and since creatures giving you poison already had to do damage in most cases, it made each poison worth 3+ damage. Hence why a creature over a 2/X that gave you a poison counter wasn't good, it was terrible, because it would only poison effectively against players with life-gain. Otherwise, they'd hit 0 the same time they'd hit 10 poison.


Now, I agree, better cards than this could be made. Magic has a HUGE problem with some wierd "All or none" complex, where you can't just find a way to remove one counter at a time, or if you do, it's not worth it. I'm not saying every anti-poison card has to say "REMOVE THEM ALL AND DESTROY THEIR STRATAGY", but a few cards that let you get rid of some counters wouldn't have hurt. "Sacrifice a creature without infect: remove poison counters from target player equal to the dudes toughness" wouldn't have been ANY worse than the support poison has. I mean, let's face it, infect has the support of EVERY CARD WITH THE WORD DAMAGE OR AN ARBITRARY INCREASE IN POWER ON IT.

You can't make a damage-based mechanic and then claim it's not a second life-total.

You might be able to throw chump-blockers in an infect-creature's way for a while, but what kind of nonsense is it when you can use Pandemonium, Viridian Longbow, and Soul's Fire to kill a player with almost no viable form of prevention? Once damage = poison, poison = life, it's a simple as that. All infect did was make poison into a short-cut to a much quicker and easier life-total.
"If you can get rid of poison, then what's the point?"
If you can deal damage they can't heal, why bother dealing regular damage?

It's a good thing this card isn't in Standard, or poison would not be very flavorful.

This + Phyrexian Unlife = delay loss

Man; people sure are obsessing over this card. personally, I don't think we needed a reprint of this or any poison removal at all. The fact that you can't remove poison counters is one thing that makes them unique. A skilled player can certainly defeat infect decks through well-planned trades and the fact that most of their creatures are inferior.
Besides, infect decks aren't exactly tearing up standard and the deck has never been tier-1. What's all the fuss about?

Personally, I hate infect. Wither and poisonous were two separate mechanics to begin with, and it worked. I like wither. I like poisonous. Infect? really? We have 2 single drop infect cards, and 9 two drops, 8 of which are standard. And one of those is unblockable! Sure, some die to doom blade. Yeah, you can cancel them. But that's not a defense. It's not a strategy. It's delaying the inevitable. It's only delay because anyone who plays with one infect creature plays an entire deck of them. A blightsteel might be a pain but it dies to revoke existence , but a New Phyrexia fat pack's worth of infect creatures is impossible to defend against. There is no defense, no strategy, no counter. Wizards of the coast, I implore you! Find something to counter poison or infect! And i'm not talking specific mechanic hate. I mean cards like a white "Choose one- Gain 4 life OR remove 2 poison counters" maybe even throw in an entwine cost. a red "Remove 2 poison counters, deal 4 damage to target creature" a blue "Remove a poison counter, draw a card" or better yet "counter target spell." a black "Remove a poison counter, destroy target non-black creature." a green "Remove a poison counter, creatures you control gain +1/+1 until the end of turn." It would make the johnny's happy too, because then they can combo with cards that give themselves poison counters.

EDIT: I figured since i was commenting on this card, I should make a comment about it. Combos with Personal Sanctuary for free poison counter removal.

There's an artifact that makes you hexproof now. Put that in your deck, and any infect deck becomes a piece of s***.

@d20Insaneously It doesn't work like that.

I see a lot of suggested anti-poison cards going on here.

What about some kind of life link thing?

If you have any poison counters, when this card deals damage it instead removes that many or fewer poison counters from you and puts an amount of -1/-1 or poison counters equal to the amount of poison counters you removed onto the creature or player it dealt damage to, respectively.

Leeches: Bane of Phyrexia

Why is this reprinted in Masters Edition IV if there's no poison cards in the same set?

The flavor text is true. It is impossible to get rid of Poison Counters through spells nowadays. We need something, if not this powerful, even if its a {1}{W}{W} that says "Remove a Poison Counter from target player"

From a flavor standpoint I REALLY wish this card didn't exist. It would leave Karn Liberated as the only card in the game capable of dealing with poison.

So I'm going to pretend this doesn't exist.

This card has the potential to be a really good buy right now. It has a unique place, not only is it on the Reserved List, but its on the super reserved list - MaRo said that not only would it never get a reprint, but they'd never print anything LIKE it ever again.

If infect becomes OP in legacy as a deck, then these things could suddenly become hard to find fast. It has a low chance of happening, because this isn't a very efficient defense anyway, but for a low cost of $2 for a mint copy that's unlikely to decrease in the near future, I think its worth a shot.