When Scars of Mirrodin was announced, MTG players were expecting quite a few things.  Not the least of these was a new answer to the Control Decks that were sure to dominate the new Standard environment.  While duelists may have had no love for Cascade towards the end, it was understood that Magic is a game of balance, and not everyone wanted each game decided by who drew Jace 2.0 first.  Enter poison and the new infect mechanic, WotC’s answer to the need for a Cascade/Affinity-type aggro element.

For much of Magic’s history, poison has been relegated to the very far back of the creature abilities line.  Poison has its place standing alongside other failed, or underwhelming, abilities like banding, and rampage.  By design, poison counters were rare and creatures that distributed them were even rarer.  Only seven cards printed before Future Sight had the ability to beat a player using poison, including truly laughable cards like Pit Scorpion.  With the second Time Spiral expansion, Wizards only added two new cards (Snake-Cult Initiation, and Virulent Sliver) to the mix, as if to say ‘yes we know poison counters exist, we just don’t want you using them.’  Now poison drips from the fangs of almost a third of the creatures in SoM, and more has been promised for Mirrodin Besieged.

With very few exceptions, poison is an aggro mechanic and that means a counter to control heavy decks builds.  While currently not nearly as effective vs control archetypes as Cascade, Infect still has the ability to lay low an unsuspecting player who may believe the game is well-in-hand.  Hasted creatures, instant buffers, and comes-into-play effects make defending against poison all that much more difficult.  Especially in formats without much removal, cards like Plague Stinger can swing a match by themselves.

[caption id="attachment_12711" align="alignleft" width="223" caption="poison wasn't always a powerhouse"][/caption]

In no format is this more prevalent than Limited, with its lack of spot removal, or exact card choice.  A well timed Tainted Strike or Putrefax is difficult to defend in any format, let alone Sealed and Draft where letting your opponent take a few free swings into the redzone is a given.  During the Scars pre-release Gathering Magic attended, players scooping with well over 20 life points was a regular occurrence.  After all, so many of us have been trained to keep an eye on only one-number when making attack/block decisions.  Sneakily adding a second, often vastly more meaningful, number into the equation was very tough for the majority of players to reconcile.  Speaking and posting about it since, the consensus was that we were not alone in our experience.  So poison is changing the way we play one format, but how about Limited’s more famous brother Constructed, more specifically Standard?

The wave that is poison from Mirrodin 2.0 has not yet crashed fully on the shores of Standard tournaments.  The aggro decks are still Red Deck Wins variants, and Elfball variants, with most of the other non-Control builds centered around Primeval Titan and Destructive Force/Valakut.  The questions remains whether poison can ‘infect’ Constructed the way it did Limited.  Certainly it has not thus far, but with an entire expansion dedicated to the mechanic, we may yet see the day where Grand Prix Top 8s are littered with Ichor Rats and Carrion Calls.

Until then we’ll have to wait and see the full effect of Mark Rosewater’s favorite pet mechanic.  Either way, fans of poison can take solace in knowing that Limited will be a dominated by this reborn ability through at least one more set.  And old school gamers looking to use that dusty bin of Swamp Mosquitos can now put them to use much more effectively.  No matter, the role of an Affinity/Cascade-type mechanic for aggro lovers everywhere has been filled.

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To see just how big an effect Poison plays in the next expansion, stay glued to the Mirrodin Besieged spoiler page.