Magic: The Gathering’s newest card set has been released. Phyrexia: All Will Be One is set on the Phyrexia plain and features rather dark themes. Many of the cards are corrupt, manipulative, shadowy, and there’s a distinct lack of “heroes.” Phyrexia encourages players to employ stealth techniques to defeat their enemies — opting for poisoning their opponents.
Here are 10 cards from the new set with the new toxic mechanic.
Poison your opponent to death
Poison counters have been a long-time favorite in MTG since they provide a different way for players to defeat their opponent. By ensuring your enemy accumulates ten poison counters, you win the game.
However, this has been a relatively difficult way to win the game. Not only have there been a limited number of cards with this mechanic, it’s a lengthy process to gain those ten counters. If you don’t deal the tenth blow, the other nine are irrelevant. Magic: The Gathering have fixed poison by adding two new mechanics — toxic, and corrupted.
Creatures with toxic deal poison damage each time they attack. If you have a creature with two toxic, every time you attack, your opponent takes two poison damage. Corrupted makes certain cards stronger if your opponent has three or more poison counters. We’ll just focus on the cards with the toxic mechanic — those that can add poison counters.
Flensing Raptor
This creature will deal one toxic damage. Combine that with its flying ability and it’s a pretty good start for any white deck. It only costs three mana and you can target another creature to give it toxic until the end of your turn.
Karumonix, the Rat King
Like rats? Then you’ll love this card. The Rat King has one toxic himself, and he’ll give any other rats you control one toxic. You can use his ability to add rats to your hard from your deck.
Nimraiser Paladin
This creature has a good base of two toxic. Each time this knight attacks he’ll do two toxic damage. He also gives you the ability to add other creatures to your hand from your graveyard.
Sheoldred’s Headcleaver
As with Nimraiser, Sheoldred will also deal a base of two toxic damage. It also has Menace, meaning Sheoldred can’t be blocked except by two or more creatures.
Bloated Contaminator
For only three mana, this card is relatively powerful. It does a base damage of one toxic, and is a 4/4 card to boot. It also has Trample, meaning if your opponent blocks with a creature and that creature is destroyed, if Bloated Contaminator has more damage available, that damage will go through to the opponent’s life points.
This card also has Proliferate, meaning you can choose any trait that you or your opponent have, and add one to its count. For example if you choose “poison” you can add one to your opponent’s poison count. This is a must add to your green deck.
Plague Nurse
Arguably one of the prettier cards from this set, Plague Nurse does two toxic damage. Each creature you have on the battlefield also gains one toxic until the end of your turn. You can deal a lot of toxic damage in one turn if you play your cards right.
Venomous Brutalizer
With a base damage of three toxic, Venomous Brutalizer is pretty powerful. You can also pay mana to use the proliferate mechanic that Bloated Contaminator has above.
Tyrranax Atrocity
Aside from being a 4/4 card, Tyrranax Atrocity deals three toxic each time it attacks.
Necrogen Rotpriest
This card deals two toxic damage. On top of this, whenever you deal toxic damage to your opponent using a creature, you add another poison counter to their total count. You could easily stack up the poison counters in one move.
Dune Move
This is a cheap, two mana card that can quickly deal one toxic to your opponent whilst giving you a land card.
Phyrexia: All Will Be One
Well that’s it for our top toxic picks. There are plenty of cards in the new set with the toxic mechanic. You can browse all the set cards on the Magic: The Gathering website. If you are thinking about building a new toxic-centered deck, check out our guide on crafting your ideal MTG deck.
Published: Mar 7, 2023 03:06 pm