Future Sight has POISON!!!!

Yup, the card below makes me happy =)




It is a big advancement from past poisoners, you can read my lamentations here.

In the past poison was something of an after thought... a joke among the Spikes, a challenge for Johnnies. So what to do if you are a Spike/Johnny? (Which is me by the way). Well you try and try to get it to me competitive =P


Well lets do a little history of the poisoners available:

From Legends (which introduced poison)


Pit Scorpion:



Serpent Generator




The Dark gave us:

Marsh Viper




Alliances gave us the irrepressible:

Swamp Mosquito!!!!!!




Mirage then gave us:

Sabertooth Cobra


Crypt Cobra



Finally Visions gave us:




Beyond that?


Nada!


Its been 10 years! The last poison card produced was in 1997!!!

Of course 5th and 4th had it, but it only provided the marsh viper and pit scorpion.

And those are hardly stellar examples.

The only competitive (yes it is funny to use the word with poison lol) cards were Swamp mosquito and Suq'ata Assassin. Because of evasion and cost.


But thats all in the past.


Specifically, 10 years into the past.



Today there is the Virulent Sliver!!!!


Now why am I excited about this card?

Because it is on a friggin sliver!!! You see, part of the problem was that poison by itself is a very deadly win condition. 10 counters and you lose. What does this mean? It means manno to manno between a poison 1/1 and a vanilla 1/1 the poison 1/1 kills in 10 turns while the vanilla 1/1 requires 20 turns!!

i.e. it is theoritically 2 times faster than damage.

That is why RnD are typically very cautious with the mechanic.



Too cautious.

So 10 years have passed and perhaps putting poison on a sliver might make up for it.

Why? Because slivers allows you to build the perfect poisoner. Need flying? Trample? First strike? Anything!!

Of course there is the whole build up thing and so on.

Of course the naysayers will claim that in 10 strikes, your opponent should be dead anyways. True. But that is barring life gain. Still there is some merit to poison on slivers. With each Virulent Sliver in play your slivers get poisonous +1. So with 4 you'd get slivers with poisonous 4.

Think about that for a moment. Even with muscle or sinew slivers you get a +4/+4 boost at most. If we assume 1 poison counter to be equivalent to 2 damage. Then 4 poison is actually +8 damage. more than what the current +1/+1 slivers can offer. Its not so simple of course as each individual sliver would have have a base power toughness, but something to keep in mind nevertheless (since it is higly unlikely that your opponent is gonna let your sliver waltz in to deal damage).

All said, I do not think the Virulent Sliver will break any formats, but it is definitely something interesting to build around.

That said I hope FS will have more poison creatures or spells that play with the poison counters. Is poison just another "damage"? No. Not really. The key difference is that poison uses counters. The counters could be moved, even removed for beneficial or detrimental effects, they could affect creatures or life points even.

For example this card I made:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Forest Miasma 2G - Enchantment
During your upkeep remove one poison counter from the game. (if you do not have any poison counters, remove a poison counter from target opponent instead)

For each creature attacking you, its owner gains 1 poison counter.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Alone against it it is laughable and will not stop your opponent's creatures from going to the red zone. But in multiples and with a dedicated poison deck, can your opponent still laugh off this deck lightly?

Hard to say, it really depends on whether wizards will print cards along this line (which I hope thay would =))


All said I hope you have a better idea of what poison is and would give it a shot =D


Cheers!