The PC Entry

I’m tired of being sick. Last Wednesday I felt the makings of a head-cold and I’m toiling in the snot factory right now trying to get over it. This is why there haven’t been any updates for a while. Now that I’m sick, though, my attention—like anyone else’s attention, I’m sure—turns to poison counters. I just have this feeling that my illness is caused by having seven or eight of them.

Anyway…

Poison counters are a great casual format win condition because no one ever considers them. Plus, since it only takes 10 poison counters as opposed to 20 damage, your win theoretically takes only half as long as theirs. Poison counter cards are cheap monetarily, so you can build an entire deck out of the 5centbin if you can find some of the better creatures.

There are only eight cards that deal with poison counters, and only seven of those deal with the distribution of them. The eighth card, Leeches, actually removes poison counters, but I’d be surprised that a person would actually consider death-by-poison-counter as an actual threat, so if you build a 5centbin poison counter deck, I think you’ll be okay. Also, Leeches is from Homelands (a set with no cards that give poison counters) so most people will be too embarrassed to play it, even in their sideboards.

I’ll rank the cards based on my evaluation:

7. Crypt Cobra – The big cobra just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the poison counter creatures. It costs too much to just give one counter, and his 3/3 body will actually kill the opponent before the poison counters, so what’s the point? Crypt Cobra also has to attack and be unblocked, so there’s no tricky way to go about getting poison counters on a player. Unless you’re just trying to build a deck that uses poison counters as a second kill, skip it.

6. Serpent Generator – This really should be a cool card, but unless you’re trying to ramp up to the six mana needed to play it on the second turn, it will probably be too late. It could be a support card for late game heroics, but really, you should just try to win sooner.

5. Sabertooth Cobra – The only reason this card is ranked lower than Pit Scorpion is because it also deals more relative damage than poison counters. If you attack with this, assuming your opponent pays to keep the extra poison counter off, you’ll deal 20 damage on the same turn they have 10 poison counters. Still, this card does work with damage dealing creature enchantments and equipment, so feel free to slap a Hermetic Study on this guy.

4. Pit Scorpion – Remember Scorpinok from Transformers: Energon? That guy was pretty cool. Pit Scorpion, though, is pretty average—the yardstick against which all other poison counter creatures are measured.

3. Marsh Viper – The Viper should probably be your fourth turn play in any poison-counter deck. It’s got a solid body and deals a whole two poison counters whenever it deals damage. That puts your opponent on a five-turn clock to stop this guy, which makes him effectively a 4/2 creature.

2. Suq’Ata Assassin – The drawback to the assassin is that it costs double black to play. The bonus is that he comes with Fear attached, so it’s like the 1/1 poison-counter creature only costs a colorless to play. Either way, evasion is really good with poison counters, so this gets high marks.

1. Swamp Mosquito – The best of the bunch comes out early and has flying to get the damage through. I think they even pointed out at MagictheGathering.com that it’s like playing a 2/1 for two mana if you plan on carrying the poison-counters through for the win. Swamp Mosquito is a must have in any deck that’s going to attack to give poison counters.

So you’ll probably want to have at least Swamp Mosquito, Suq’Ata Assassin, and Marsh Viper in your poison counter deck if you plan on attacking. I like this plan because it keeps you in two colors and gives you good support cards like Unearth and Winter Blast to make sure your attacks go through. Tawnos’s Wand is pretty good too if you can get it out early enough, and mana accelerators like Wild Growth and Fertile Ground make it that much more likely.

Something like this, perhaps?

4x Swamp Mosquito
4x Suq’Ata Assassin
4x Marsh Viper
2x Serpent Generator

4x Fog
4x Winter Blast
4x Tawnos’s Wand
4x Unearth
4x Consume Strength

4x Wild Growth

12x Swamp
10x Forest

Of course, you can jazz that up anyway you like. One card that I really like in these colors is Consume Strength. It’s usually two-for-one card advantage if you use it in combat; you kill their creature by giving it -2/-2 and you pump your own creature to take out another of theirs. And of course if you really want to dump some money into this, you could always get Pernicious Deed or Plague Boiler.

The other option with a poison counter deck is to use pinging enchantments and equipment to avoid that whole, messy combat thing.

4x Sabertooth Cobra
4x Marsh Viper
4x Pit Scorpion

4x Viridian Longbow
4x Hermetic Study
4x Shuriken

4x Wild Growth
2x Fertile Ground
4x Terror
4x Impulse

5x Island
9x Forest
8x Swamp

Of course, for this deck, getting your combo pieces together is fairly important, so adding tutors or search cards would only make this better. Actually, if you could get rid of the blue component altogether and just run it with the artifacts, that would probably be the best way. I’m not sure how to get around Shuriken’s drawback without being blatant and using Conspiracy, but good luck with that.

Anyway, take a look and see what you can find out about poison counters. They’re a lot more viable, at least on the casual circuit, than people give them credit for, and there are lots of directions you can take a poison-counter deck.

Good luck, and watch out for leeches.