Should Poison Rules Change in Commander? | Magic: the Gathering (MTG)
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2023
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Tomer and Seth debate whether the number of poison counters it takes to kill someone in Commander should be changes as a result of the new toxic cards from Phyrexia: All Will Be One! What do you think? Let's us know in the comments!
Today's video is brought to you by Card Kingdom. You can pick up some MTG cards (and help support the show) at www.cardkingdom.com/mtggoldfish
#MTG #commander #edh #magicthegathering - Ігри
You heard our arguments now it's time for you to decide the winner! Did Tomer win the debate and poison should stay at 10, or did Seth win the debate and convince you that poison should be increased to 20? Let us know below!
Tomer, hands down.
I already agreed with Tomer and nothing Seth said changed my mind
Tomer won, not even close.
As someone who's actually tested this with friends back when Scars came out, 15 worked out really well so nobody wins!
even though the argument of everything else being broken is a bad argument i do think that poison isnt too bad of a mechanic. it sets a clock on people who do not defend themselfs and its just another way to win the game. I dont think ive seen anything as oneshotty in the set as the examples you have set already. Im normally a combo player trying to make weird and intricate combos work, but just seeing combo over and over again doenst feel too exciting unless there is someone pressuring everyone to answer them and poison is one of the ways to do this. sure it feels bad getting thrown out early but just seeing everyone stay back to generate value oneshot people after a certain amount of time gets stale fast. i think its a necessary evil just like control. the game for me is about interaction between players and seeing all the different strategies that are available. if people at the table really and i mean really dislike poison to the point where they would move tables then sure, maybe take another deck instead if you want to continue playing with them. until then i think infect and almost all other game mechanics are cool to see and experiment with, as long as you, and the table, are having a relatively good time
This is such a good idea for the channel, podcasts are full of hot takes and debates, I’d love to see tons of these weekly
I want to see one debating the merits of Sword of Body and Mind with Crim and literally anyone lol
This. Yes this please
I'd like to see an actual debate instead of a rehearsed back and forth.
There’s not enough content to make this stuff weekly
"Poison is a toxic play pattern" had me rolling
I think a lot about Sorin 1 and Magister Sphinx when we talk about poison, cards that both were called to be banned ages ago and are practically forgotten today
I love og Sorin, one time I got the wombo combo with Sorin and his vengeance it was amazing
another thing is that many of the new corrupted cards encourage you to not just burst down one guy really fast because they give you value for each opponent that is corrupted
Encourage, but not necessary to make the choice on player removal.
I think that one of the main problems I have with the commander format is how much aggression and attacking is disincentivized. So I think it would be a mistake to make an aggressive option, which already isn't very good, worse.
Poison is branching out into nonaggressive archetypes now, so it's definitely something to keep an eye out for as we get more poison cards over the next 2 sets.
@@Enja_Near proliferate is what is pushed right now, thanks to all for one.
@@gn0s1s Not sure why you had to confirm to me what I just stated.
(Proliferate is pushed because it has access to easy poison counters without the need to turn dudes sideways)
@@Enja_Near proliferate =\\= poison.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Exactly, every discussion about poison/voltron in commander boils down to, just trying to make aggro decks which are already bad in commander even worse.
I definitely vibe with how MTG Goldfish is like the only channel with debates that never seem to get too personal or serious.
People disagree and are open minded. They're always pretty chill.
I feel like the stance on rule changes should always be don't change anything unless neccesary. If it becomes a problem then deal with it, but not before. Additionally I think it's important to remember that agro infect decks that are looking to race their opponent require that critical mass of infect creatures and pump spells. That critical mass is so much harder to hit in a singleton format like commander.
Indeed. We have way more options for that mass now, but everything else has gotten bonkers fast too, so 10 poison strategies are probably "keeping up" at best.
I played the new poison precon on MTGO twice yesterday. I dealt/proliferated about 40 poison counters over the two games but couldn't kill anyone with it (but I got close and had fun along the way!). If lethal poison was set to 20 I don't think I would've had any hope of eliminating all three opponents that way.
Heck combos like thassa oracle, underworld breach line, lab man combos, fast zero drop rocks, dockside lines and always dying before you get to your 3 land drop is what folks should be worried about.
I would argue that the poison mechanic is still harder to pull off in commander than 1v1 because you still need to deal 30 poison to the table rather than just 10 to win the game, not to mention the table turning on you and you becoming the archenemy.
This argument falls apart if poison becomes common. If two in the pod are playing poison then two players are racing to ten where the others are racing to 40.
You need to deal 30 instead of 10 but your opponent needs to take only 10 still. So from an opponent perspective there is no scalling at all, except his deck is probably slower.
well... does it mean I have to do 120 damage to win right? again this argument falls apart
Proliferate makes poison op . 3x10 counters . Easy
A major point against changing poison that I don't often see mentioned is that there's printed reminder text on cards that explains that 10 poison counters means death, and if the change (which would be a massive actual rules change) was even made then there would be cards that didn't actually play the way the card itself says (reading the card no longer explains the card) which is far worse than "i died because I got sacked by the poison player".
also "poison is 'quadruple strike' in Commander" argument fails to rebut that "quadruple strike" is super badass and should be allowed.
But they’ve changed cards like this before, most recently the Companion Mechanics. Regardless Reminder text is not the same thing as rules text
If it is a commander only change I don't think it matters if the rules text is changed. The only thing they would need to do is print new poison counter cards that add the commander exception (granted if the change to 20 was going to happen I think it would have with the release of the set).
saying major rule change is not an argument.
Commander as a Format is a player Format AND a major rule change in itself.
You have 100 singleton cards
40 life instead of 20
play against 3 players
and have a dude chilling next to you always waiting to be casted.
These ARE rule changes.
And poison could be one of them.
@@andrewbedwell8186 and it was a bad thing that people rightly ridiculed WotC for.
@keldone3186 i haven't seen a convincing argument that it should be. all you've done is point out that Commander is a different format, really. And that doesn't mean an entire mechanic should be completely destroyed.
Are there any mechanics that function completely, textually differently between any formats?
a comparison I don't see being made is that poison needs 3 times the hits vs 60 card formats vs something like aristocrats where your aristocrats are draining EACH opponent so you only need twice as many triggers as in 60 card formats. different strategies are affected differently by the rules of commander thats just the way it is
Yes, but the poison strategy has those sorts of cards as well. Quite a few ‘give each opponent a poison counter’ cards were added in ONE, and proliferate also gives a poison to everyone (as long as they each had a poison before), and again lots of proliferate cards were added in ONE. while toxic/infect might get the first couple poison counters, I think proliferate is gonna be the real killer.
Poison isn't 10 in commander, it's 30 since you have 3 opponents.
So I've heard this argument several times but the issue is proliferating. It's not 30, usually, it's just a rush to 1 and then proliferating 9 times. In a higher-powered game, not a big deal, but casual poison is strong.
By that logic, Commander life totals are 120 and lethal Commander damage would be 63.
But all joking aside, I get where you are coming from.
10 is definitely fine as long as only one deck at the table plays infect.
@@CompetitiveEDHI don't see how someone can consistently proliferate 9 times without getting beat down by the other 3 players first. If someone can really get there, they earned it
No one I know or play with has ever had this proliferate issue. If everyone has poison counters and they’re up against an Atraxa deck then the Atraxa player just gets killed first. And if you’re the arch enemy and you still manage to pull it off then you deserve the win. Nothing printed in new phyrexia changes that. Almost every proliferate card is still relatively sub-standard for cmc compared to the major format staples. Poison is just fine where it is.
@@theetiologist9539 I agree here Atraxa is archenemy at a casual table but why it that because you get 1 poison then they may just fort up and pretty much not play the game.
Please do more debate videos like this. Encourages the community to actually have conversations
It's too early to have this discussion, it's best to see what happens in the format before making any decisions. With all the new Poison and Proliferate coming in the new sets, you may need to look at changes in the future. However if there is anything super degenerate, it will probably eat a ban first.
There are rarely any bans in commander don't expect a ban to fix any degenerate strategies.... That being said though; there are plenty of degenerate strategies that are fine if you don't like a thing like stacks you don't have to play against it playgroups correct themselves by weeding out the most degenerate strategies either by focus or group bans ... after you poison a group for the 3rd time in a row don't expect anyone to play you though.
Well, the last Game Knight Episode had a toxic/poison and a proliferate player on the table and it was not a dominating factor. Poison is alright at 10.
Was kinda hoping there was a poll in the description to vote on
ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxkygBCVonAfEo5HSZIFNonIxF-NTPiipd
first link in the description is that poll
100% agree with Tomer here. I've never seen infect be a problem before in commander.
It should remain at 10. It wasn't an issue with Fynn, because you needed Deathtouchers to hit face, and each one only ever gave 2 poison counters. The problem with Poison as a win-con is due to Infect, and how it could happen so suddenly. It didn't help that Infect would also weaken any creatures hit by it (something that has been fixed with Toxic being the new main keyword).
Triumph of the Hordes, Tainted Strike, and Grafted Exoskeleton, all gave infect to either a large board or giant creatures, that would then apply 10 poison counters each. Leading up to that point, there was never any hint at Poison being the win-con.
With this new set, you're going to see Poison counters come at you from a mile away. These new cards aren't going to surprise you and your opponents with 10+ poison counters in one attack. The new cards won't be an issue. Even if you see some of these new cards in decks that don't rely on Poison to win, it won't be an issue.
If you are still adamant that the number needs to go up, I would say increase it to 15 at most. Anything more would kill any chances for new decks to use Poison, and will only encourage players to use Tainted Strike and Triumph of the Hordes even more.
I like this video format. Its like a bite-sized version of the podcast debates.
In cEDH poison counters remain almost unusable even with the release of ONE.
In casual playgroups, 10 is pushed imo but, especially if there is only one poison/ proliferate deck at the table, really manageable. In my experience, it usually leads to the infect player getting the short end of the stick.
I wouldn't say poison counter decks are any worse than combo decks. As long as you're open about your deck's power level, I couldn't care less about how you pull off your sneaky win on turn 5.
That being said, in 1v1 commander poison counters are really strong but so are other strategies.
I'd 1v1 the poison deck over an Urza artifact+counterspell value pile or Ragavan Voltron deck any day!
I like this format of video, would love to see more in the future!
My best argument for it to not change is that there is usually only one person at most on a poison strategy who has to poison out about three other players on their own. While with regular damage all players are usually capable of contributing to damage.
I’ve never seen a poison deck actually win even with 10 poison counters.
(Except of course with triumph of the hordes in a non poison deck.)
I have a few full-pod infect creature kills with dedicated infect decks.
Loved this video! Reminds me of an old series the professor and Josh Lee Kwai used to have called In Response. Been wanting that back for years and you guys delievered
I’ve got an Infect Commander deck (Scorpion God), and, in my experience, it is REALLY hard to kill even a single player with poison, much less the whole table. The only time the 10 counters feels “too low” is when someone uses Blightsteel or Triumph to one-shot somebody.
Just to add, but Blightsteel is also a 12 mana card. 12 mana to kill one person isn't crazy, and a deck that can cheat that out can also cheat out any number of other crazy powerful cards, especially if you aren't trying to squeeze in proliferation and big creature cheating at any kind of reliable ratio. Blightsteel doesn't even have indestructible in an era of pretty common exile effects, I'm not saying it isn't a powerful card, just that 12 mana to kill one person is not unprecedented in the format, so while, to your point, that is when it "feels low", when I think of it from the "a 12 mana permanent just killed me", rather than "I was at 35 life and I died", it doesn't seem unreasonable.
I agree with tomer although my argument is that even though life totals are higher there are 2 more people you have to kill and raising it to 20 would make it even more (near impossible without combos) to kill a whole table.
it should not change, infect is designed around the fact that you really need to pump or proliferate to kill someone.
Most people do not think about the fact that infect does not cause you to lose any life. If one of your opponents is at 9 poison counters but 40 life, for everyone not playing infect he is still at 40 life.
Life is a resource and if try to kill with poison you are letting them utilize that resource way more
I remember the Plague Myr episode I was dying watching Seth convince the board to kill Tomer
I want a mechanic to have a degree of counterplay or interaction. It's sort of my issue with PW emblems as well. I don't dislike poison counters, but it would be nice for there to be a kryptonite for the players who feel like they need one.
I don't have a lot of opinions on the topic at hand but I just wanted to say I appreciate you trying out a new format. I imagine all the scripts and editing take a lot of time. The effort shows!
the reason you start with 40 life in commander is because you have 3 opponents who are all trying to get your life total to 0, 20 would be too easy for someone to incidentally die way too early in the game. poison doesnt need to change because there is only 1 person typically applying poison. they aren't getting any help from the rest of the table including the players incidentally lowering their own life totals with fetch lands, shock lands, mana crypts and any other card where paying life is supposed to be a "drawback" but against the poison player all this incremental damage is not helping them win the game at all. 20 poison per opponent is absolutely absurd and would completely kill the archetype. even 15 would be a huge nerf.
Great idea for a video. Loved it!
Fun new format for the channel’s content. I’m with Tomer on this one.
There is one card I know of with toxic 9 & you think 20 counters is impossible? Build around Monument to Perfection & make it unblockable in the same deck. 2 attacks of that would have u 2 away from 20 counters. This would also be 9 damage per attack, so you may need to play vs a Life gain focused deck, to make poison more valued to kill that type of player
The problem is proliferate. And Phyrexia All Will Be One adds a ton of proliferate support. One poison counter is all you need.
I really like this debate style video. It's much more watchable than a full-length podcast
More content like this!!! Love it
The problem I have with Poison is that it's difficult to interact with outside a few cards once the counters are already on a player and there are a few cards that can quickly knock out a single player in one shot without much build up (Tainted Strike and Blightsteel Colossus). Most other strategies you can adapt to over time, but those cards can KO out of nowhere. Even cards like Craterhoof Behemoth, a card many people don't like, you can see it coming since it requires a board presence for it to have any effect. Even for slower games, proliferate will kill you since you can't really interact with Poison counters so you're just dying much quicker than you would from normal damage or mill in most cases.
I think boosting the amount needed to 20 or even 15 would be completely fine since all it takes is for one counter to land to eventually die to it. When I die to it, it's either out of nowhere, or I'm hit by a single infect creature and then die to proliferation, so it's not like the poison player is struggling to take out multiple opponents with it since all it takes is one poison counter on each player to then proliferate. I like to think of poison counters as being like emblems since you can't interact with them, and they're often powerful enough to end the game, at least for one player quickly.
The lack of interaction with counters on players is definitely the issue. It was the problem with energy, the problem with experience, and it is the single biggest problem with poison. As it stands, not only are there very few cards that do this, but they are also very narrow, making them completely unplayable outside of decks designed to abuse the effect. We need to see more cards that incidentally interact with any counter, be it on a permanent or a player, while still providing a desirable effect at a cost that is reasonable enough to consider even if it didn't have the counters clause.
@@Wiseclone5555 One of the greatest strengths of MtG is its interactivity (e.g. the stack and all that), but when there's a mechanic such as Poison, Energy, Emblems that have little to no interactivity, they really stick out.
I don't think Seth brought a really compelling argument. Poison "feeling wrong" when it isn't ACTUALLY overpowered isn't reason enough to effectively ban dozens of cards that say poison or infect.
I get that, and for cEDH I'd agree. But most commander is mostly kitchen table magic, and fun is the most important aspect of the game. So in that sense, something feeling wrong, even if it actually isn't breaking the game, is fair to call out as potentially detrimental.
@@brennanmack563 I can see calling it "potentially detrimental" as appropriate, because it is, as are a lot of things. However, the potential doesn't make it so, so unless it actually gets out of control, I say leave it. It's rare enough anyways that people on the kitchen table probably won't suffer any feelbads.
@@DylanHunter64 I agree, and I'm also a bit surprised at the argument mostly because is poison even that hated? Like if someone infected me out with Triumph or whatever, I don't really care. But if people really just hate poison kills, then I get the argument.
@@brennanmack563 People are I'm immediately afraid of it, at least most casual players are.
The community I play already started testing the new cards. Yeah poison needs to be increased on EDH maybe modern. On EDH was able kill 38hp player after using white suns twilight on my jinnie Fay deck. Feels kinda wrong able easily kill player just 10 1/1 toxic tokens.
We played 2HG for the prerelease, poison was raised to 15, and it was still the way we mostly died
the design is extremely ingrained at 10 now though. look at new vraska's ult, how bad does that feel if the total is suddenly 20? Dealing 30 across your 3 opponents is unlikely and difficult, always has been, and you always get hated out of the game so its not an appealing strategy to telegraph unless you are coming prepared for that... the scariest infect cards have always been the unexpected 1 shot ones, not the "hey there, im a deck thats planning to poison you to death" decks. but as tomer says, thats no different to other "hey i win now" surprise tricks, ive done that with approach of the second sun, or just any combo that generates infinite mana / turns or w/e. at least infect just kills you then and there and doesnt slow roll you while the player solitaires' for 30 minutes.
The issue with poison as a mechanic is that you can't interact with it unless you're playing very specific white or green cards in a 100 card deck. Slap each player once with infect and suddenly you only need to proliferate 9 times to instantly kill the table, and thanks to all the Phyraxia sets and War of the Spark, there's an abundance of okay to good proliferate cards that, even if you don't play all of, are likely to see in other archetypes
Thanks guys, this was brilliant
i love this quick debate video format.
I think the sole potential poison problem coming out of ONE is atraxa decks having lots of ways to "give each opponent a poison counter." Makes the setup way easier for an atraxa deck to start the clock, and it takes a lot of work from the table to shut them down and avoid death by poison at that point tbh. Because proliferate has gotten pretty easy and there's even a doubler now.
The only thing I could see getting changed is an atraxa banning, what with her being the most popular commander and adopting a rather powerful uninteractive playstyle.
For me the problem is that the very first cards that ever played around poison counters actually state on the card and in their Oracle text that a player with 10 poison counters loses the game. Check Pit Scorpion (Legends), Marsh Viper (The Dark) or Sabertooth Cobra (Mirage) for the three that came to my mind, but there might be others.
While for cards like Serra Ascendant, sure they weren't designed with Commander in mind, but no cards (to my knowledge) state that a game of Magic must be started at 20 life, so you can play around this "ambiguity" when deciding for how much life you want to start with. The first poison counters creatures clearly state how many poison counters you need to have to die, so this is a hard rule the RC can't easily play around, regardless how crappy these three OG cards are.
They'd need to either errata them or ban them, which sounds like a lot of work for a mechanic that may not be problematic in the first place
I used to hate poioson. Then I happen to start playing more controlling decks. I could stop on average. I tried playing poison. Just lose to the typical tier style of decks. Poison is scary, but not game breaking.
Yeah, all other players draw 3 cards a turn and have 10 Mana, but your little infect elf is overpowerd :D
Every time people complain and say poison should be doubled, it just makes me want the life total in commander to be halved. Giving people 20 extra life just encourages everyone to play less removal and then complain when they don't have an answer to something.
Yuuuuup
From what I have seen on Game Knights and Worst Possible (albeit All Will Be One episodes), poison is a threat that commander players are forced to consider before life total or decking.
At the same time, poison is not built to get to 20 on 3 people,
I feel like people who bitch about poison are the same type of people who bitch about counter spells and interaction.
The lighthearted digs at the end were fun and I enjoyed them. I think poison should stay the same. 10 is iconic and on their own poison isn't as strong as mechanics like storm or various other 1-2 card combos. Once people see infect you usually have an uphill battle if you aren't going for one shots.
My playgroup simply doesn't run poison - most of us weren't playing during the last Phyrexia block. Curious to see how Toxic shifts things.
Excellent video.
Love this format of video. After listening to both arguments, I have to agree with Tomer. I am a total Seth, in that I HATE poison. But that’s mainly a bias I gained from playing against affinity infect in modern before it was banned. Toxic was a great way to introduce poison as an archetype to commander without reprinting the broken infect mechanic.
And as an earlier comment pointed out, you need 30 poison to kill all opponents. Not 10.
I love this format, it's short and snappy!
Great format!
The problem with poison in commander is that the table is kind of forced into focusing the poison deck.. which then gives the other couple of players the freedom to ramp into their win cons and GG, the poison player doesn't really stand a chance to win, and the first player the poison player commits to is marked for death
It should absolutely stay at 10, imo. Poison is already terrible, it doesn't need a nerf. And even if the new poison cards would make poison based aggro decks actually good (which I highly doubt) that would be a great change for the format! Aggro in general is really underpowered in edh. You can consistently combo kill people on turn 2 but any combat based aggro deck will probably not win before turn 5-6 at best.
This is where I fall. Aggro has enough of a nerf with the life total being raised to 40. Meanwhile we allow degenerate combos like Thassa/Consultation to exist, or extremely poorly balanced commanders with Eminence or Partner to go unmodified. Poison is objectively less strong than all of these things, but somehow we are all super scared to let any aggro deck have any serious play.
Idk about terrible, got some pretty nice tools from All Will Be One
Several things that weren't addressed:
1. There is only one card in Magic that removes poison counters. Only one way to lower your count. However, there are THOUSANDS of cards that increase life.
2. Only white or green can prevent the accumulation of poison counters.
3. Proliferate is getting a significant up tick. Having a single poison counter just got far more dangerous. If I Proliferate in my super friends deck, and anyone has poison counters - I am increasing those.
Additional poison is good. Commander really needs stronger aggressive strategies.
This. Agro is bad in commander, we need more ways that let argo players keep up with the table.
New poison strats aren't necessarily aggro though. Sitting back and controlling and proliferating is also very viable & there's very little counterplay to non-permanent-based proliferate.
I feel like the proliferate strategy being buffed along with spells that just flat out give poison counters to all opponents to get the ball rolling isn't being talked about enough. Seems pretty easy to proliferate 9 times in a game of commander if that's what you're built around.
But so is playing Elf, Elf, Elf, Elf, and then craterhoof.
Great video. My biggest issue with raising the poison count above 10 is that is essentially removes an entire archetype that was never really a problem to begin with and just finally got some tools to make it maybe a little more viable. My biggest concern is adding new proliferate cards, I think that mechanic is much scarier and worth looking out for than infect/toxic/etc.
I think the life-point problem is worse. In our playgroup we play those cards like they have modern wording for a long time, because the cards were obviously designed that way. I don't mind the 10 points of infect for a kill so much, although I'd like to see it raised to 20
I think it needs to go up to 20, to match the commander damage amount.
I think they are correct that normally most people won't be running poison or toxic in commander, but, proliferate Will become more used. So if it's a way to finish off an opponent by pushing them over the amount, that'll get really easy to do.
I absolutely think incidental poison kills will be a thing now. More proliferate, more random poison in the form of cards like White Sun's Twilight and Bloated Contaminator and Skrelv. All it takes is someone running a superfriends deck with the new Ichormoon Gauntlet and someone else randomly dropping a Vraska's Fall and someone will die to poison.
However, this is not a scary thing in the slightest. It's effectively just a new avenue to win the game, "fair" poison (as opposed to Infect OHKOs). I like it a lot
Poison is basically an alternate win con and we don't change how other alternate win con or kill cons work just because the format is commander poison feels worse because it uses the combat step but it is otherwise adjacent to door to nothingness or phage
Great format.
MORE OF THIS!!!!!!! please. I miss these discussions from prof..
The big problem with posion counters in Commander in my oppoinion is proliferate. Far too many decks just give you one poision counter and than just proliferate the hell out of you with cheap cards (and of course including Atraxa). If you don not run a counterspell deck, your time runs out too quickly and you are done. Also you can´t remove posion counters which feels a little unfair. You basically can´t stop the opponent from proliferation if it is an triggered ability (unless you have a counter for that ... in commander good luck to get that one counterspell in your deck). Posion still maybe not be too powerful, but it is just unfun too play against, because it feels like the opponent is giving himself an unfair advantage by reducing your "life total" by 75% and you can´t gain life for the rest of the game from the very beginning.
My first experience with phyrexia poison. The player using it killed all 4 other players at the same time. He said he's never had a game work out that well before. He just drew things perfectly. Regardless it made me rethink how I had my freshly made deck built.
Tomer's argument of being the sole player at the table using poison makes sense to me. In a pod of 4, you've got to get rid of 120 life (excluding any Life gain). But, all three of a given players opponents can contribute to that damage. It's overly simplistic but: (40x3) / 3 = 40. x2 'required damage'. Poison is 10 x 3, no dividing. x3 'required damage'. And moving it to 20 would mean x6 'required damage'. That's getting as rough as MILL, but at least mill can benefit from players who like to draw cards (which is all of us.)
If you play against 2 people using poison/toxic the game stops being fun quickly. I think one change they could do poison is to treat it like commander damage - you need 10 poison counters from a specific player to lose. It would mean this agro strategy is still viable, but it stops having 2 players team up and take out one.
My question would be, is there any way to remove poison counters? because if u think poison is too good with a set like "all will be one" then I think that set should have at least one way to remove counters from a player.
I'd like to see a Hedrom archive debate soon! >:)
Keep at 10. Most (if not all) Poison cards are underpowered. Losing to Triumph of the Hordes or Proliferation requires other pieces and with infinite combos, and big splashy win conditions I don't see how anyone can have a problem with 10 poison. On top of that you 3 opponents so that's 20 additional points of poison.
There just needs to be a counter play for poison. Something like a reverse proliferate
love this format
I think poison is fine as is because the "broken" infect cards are very few and if you switch infect with doublestrike on those cards they get better (apart from not stacking with doublestrike). As for the proliferate mechanic buffing up the poison mechanic I don't think it's present enough nor powerfull enough to be a concern. Multiple poison/proliferate decks at a table might be a concern but not any more than having multiple burn decks or multiple mill decks. And the concern of alpha-striking a player is the same for any type of aggro deck and has been further mitigated/disinsentivissed for poison by the new Corrupted mechanic.
My thing is, infect is already hated and therefore most people don't have decks around them and know when it's okay to bring them out and will always talk with their group about it first. I'm not a huge cedh player or follower but I'm pretty sure most cedh decks don't really use infect or poison because it's generally a one person kill maybe two at best because combat damage without combos on top of it. It's a casual format that if needed the play group will change it to fit their needs to begin with
No i think it should not change but i would love to see more stuff that would remove poison counters and i would love akey word a antonym to prolifarate so you can take a counter away every where you want.
love the debate! I think it should stay the same. I think we all need to be a little corrupted! :)
I don’t think the problem is toxic/infect creatures, I think its the spells that give each opponent/player a poison, and proliferate. One spell that gives everyone a poison counter, and nine proliferates, and you win the game. With all the new proliferate / add a poison in ONE, this will not be difficult, and will be very difficult to interact with, with the except of counter spells, and even they will only slightly delay it.
Always thought poison should have been bumped to 15 in commander. Only for the fact a blightsteel colossus should not be a one shot on a player in my opinion. Plus at 15 I feel it’s still a faster count than commander damage but gives opponents enough time to adapt to the situation rather than feel immediate pressure that they need to eliminate the poison player.
Two-headed Giant rules set the starting life totals to 30 and the lethal number of poison counters to 15, so there's your precedent to adjust the lethal poison counters relative to the starting life total.
I'd argue that two headed giant as a format is enough of its own beast that using it as a precedent might need to be done with a pinch of salt
I'm not saying it's wrong to compare the formats but I don't think it would be as simple as gesturing at 2HG, saying "they did it here", and then making the change for commander.
The 15 poison counters in 2 headed giant is because both players can have infect and are on a team, its like getting a free time walk every turn so it makes more sense to raise it. In commander you're on your own team so you're losing half the creatures/mana/resources as compared to 2HG. I don't think it qualifies as a precedent due to how much variation in gameplay and resources there is compared to commander or 1v1.
As well as to win in 2HG with infect you need to deal 15, but to win against the whole board in commander you need to deal 30, so in theory, if not real world application granted, its double the poison counters needed in 2HG and triple 1v1.
@@caseyaldrich6864 By that logic, to win a game of 2HG you need to deal 30 damage, while you need to deal 120 points in Commander. Yes, others probably also do some attacking, but likewise others might start incidentally using Toxic and Corrupted now, since it's on useful card types (e.g. artifact creature tokens). The number of sources for incidental poison counters has gone up a lot with ONE.
This video was super cute, I would love to see more videos like this. Maybe get Richard and Phil in on some of them too.
The last season of commander clash had 25 games. 25 games with 4 players means 75 people had to lose those games (100 "players" but 1 wins every games, so 100-25=75). Of the 75 players who lost a game, only 7 times did someone get knocked out with commander damage. If you bumped poison damage to 20, poison becomes unviable. Which is almost the case for Voltron strategies now.
Poison should be a negative health effect each round IMO. 5 poison that goes down by one each turn. 5 dmg this turn, next turn it goes to 4.
Keep it the way it is. Dont fix what isnt broken!
Keep it at 10 and just let the inevitable 3v1s that infect decks always end up in dissuade people to not play infect. Just like it wasn't really played much before. It's just slightly better than it used to be because of the power creep finally caught up to poison cards.
No it shouldn't change, its fine the way it is, just because a new support was made for it doesn't mean it should be changed because ppl hate losing to it
I know this is an old video now but I do want to say something on the subject. Poison ( infect ) particularly was made originally for 60 card decks in a format where you could have multiple of the same cards basing that on 20 life and 10 poison being a tko. Now as commander has 100 cards and double the life @ 40 this is a slight upgrade, but it has a drawback at being a Singleton format of one of each type of card. This brings down the consistency of drawing a completely solid hand, a lot/most of the time. Most often you may not be as consistent as you like. Due to this I think that doubling the poison counters is way to drastic a maneuver. Now bringing them up to a reasonable 15 with many cards now having the corrupted ability needing at least 3 counters to start doing things and with the populate mechanic being very well utilized. I think a small increase with the thinking that now it should take the number 3 into account as to be the variable poison counters should be multiplied by. So with that being said, 12 would be closer to 10 and a multiple of 3 but in a world like magic where games can be over in one hit by a BlightSteel Colossus and a small buff to it (a single +1/+1 counter on it) I believe in having people work for the kill. So @ 15 poison counters it would possibly have to have them hit you twice to knock you out. So in all I agree to an increase just not to the extent of doubling them. Just my two cents on this subject.
i think it should be changed, simply for the reason that, currently people hate poison. and if it was at 20, it would maybe be less powerful but it would be an archytype that wont make all your friends groan as soon as you sit down at the table. which i think could actually increase its win percentage, because sure, you take longer to win, but you wont be the archenemy before the game even starts. plus if we make an archetype less powerful, in favor of it being more enjoyable, isnt that really in the spirit of the commander format? so i actually agree with tomer that people hate poison to much and its a perfectly fine archetype, but thats exactly why i think it should be at 20.
2HG has poison at 15, which is a cute way to balance out "each player" effects.
2 headed giant is 2v2 so its still zero sum. Commander isn't, and doesn't work the same.
Think of it this way: in a four player 2-headed giant game 30 poison counters eliminates everyone. That's *less* than commander which require 40 poison counters, which is 33% more.
@@timbombadil4046 i think your math is off? 30 kills in 2 headed 30 kills in commander, unless you have 5 players at the table.
Arnt poison counters per player just like any other counter(like experience counters?)
why bother with special ruling if the each player clause doesnt effect it?(not that the each player clause isnt broken in general)
Constructed 2HG has never been balances anyway and never due to 10 poison, it would not even be in the top 10.
@@welkijken if both players were playing infect? 10 would be hittable on like turn 2 extremely consistently in 2h giant
I think my issue with it in commander is how much easier it is with proliferation now. Don't get me wrong I love proliferate but now you've only got 9 spell activations before that's game. Assuming they don't add any more toxic.
I would be open to trying Commander games with 20 Poison counters as I think our two card combo with Rotpriest proves it's possible to go hard with new Toxic and this would actually HELP people that want to build around Corrupted as mechanic as you only get rewarded for corrupting a little not hitting 10. Now that being said I'll still play in games where ten is the goal because let's face it it'll be disclosed and I can put in my silly protection stuff if I don't already have it or my own weird wincons and easy infinite mana to make up the challenge. The main thing is discussing it with your playgroup before hand and saying "Well you can play Atraxa/new poison stuff but if you do I'm going to raise my challenge level a little and this won't be for fun entirely. Do you want to go hard or shall we go back to silly things?"
Also keep in mind taking one player out in Commander does not usually win you the game. There's only one Infect strat I know that wins the table that's a three piece combo (Korvald or any command with high power+Triumph + Kedris to give the table 10 Poison counters) that's like 10 mana and even with all the All Will Be One stuff floating about it's not likely to change.
I think that the command zone in their discussion about this topic put on the table the best argument, I really like the mechanic of poison counters, and even though through a combo or an a attack with Triumph of the Horde you can win a game, in reality that's not a poison win, it's just a combo or massive attack win, so with that on the table, how many times really does a player win a table of commander with poison counters, and correct me if I'm wrong but actually, is not actually very common, because everyone is afraid of the player with poison counters, so they attack you most, also it's not so easy to kill more than one player, in a game of commander may be you catch out of guard someone in an instant kill, but the other players of the table are going to respond, and be aware of your deck, so, usually, is really hard to really finish the game as the victorious one with poison counters. Toxic I think just add more cards to try it, but even, not being infect, provokes that a lot of times I think the player with poison counters is going to win more times the hole table, but not killing everyone with poison counters, but, 1 player or 2 if you really got like lucky or a good game and the other or others players with regular damage, so I think that moving poison counters from 10 to 20 I think is just saying to players, don't use toxic, win by combo or massive attacks, like one friend of our table did, when we change the rule to 20 poison counters for our table, he just make a Xenagos Deck and kill us very quickly with 50 damages of infect, so it was just like salt in the wound, hahahhaa, and we encourage that with our change of the rule, his Xenagos deck was just adding infect to annoy, because in reality he always won through massive attacks and combos, so, we discourage the use of poison counters, and that I think, is not the idea, it's like saying "you should not play land destruction or stax", even though we don't like those games very much in our table, we know that some people like control, like stax, like land destruction, and it's unfair to them to not allow them to play whatever they want to play, so for me is the same for poison counters.
I'm with Seth on this one. Poison should be half the starting life total of the format it's in. I know that if I had just learned the rules of the game, sat down at a table, and someone went "Welp, I dealt 10 damage to you. You lose." I might reconsider actually wanting to play the game at all.
I'm glad for the argument or debate on poison needing to be at least 15 maybe 20 but I'm dying with how rehearsed or written this video feels instead of your organic discussions on the podcast.
It's fine where it is, if anything Sheldon said they are waiting to see if they have to make changes to it in the future
I think y'all missed out on one of the main problems with poison which is that certain color combos (specifically simic) don't need to play with the low P/T "bad" infect cards to kill people with 10 poison counters, all they need is to get a player one poison counter and proliferate the rest of the way with busted proliferate cards like flu channeler, evolution sage, inexorable tide and the new ezuri, so they can play mostly good cards and not over commit to the poison angle and perhaps go with counter theme which is traditionally powerful. Phyrexia all will be one added 2 new cards that give poison counter and allow you to easily proliferate with bloated contaminator and contaminant grafter!
The debate that's going to make or break all the Swamp Mosquito and Marsh Viper speculators.