Poison counters have never been better inMagic: The Gathering’s Commander format than they are right now. With the release of Phyrexia: All Will Be One and the introduction of the new poison counter-related keyword, toxic, you have more options than ever for picking your new favorite poison deck.
Related:Magic: The Gathering - Best Poison Cards
If you’re just starting out or looking for ideas, the Corrupting Influence Commander preconstructed deck is the way to go. While it is a pretty good deck right out of the box, there are bound to be some upgrades you’ll want to make. With these budget upgrades, your Corrupting Influence deck can spread the poison to your opponents while keeping your spending in check.
The upgrades to this deck are limited to keep the price of each card under or at $5 (based onTCGPlayer’s Market Price) in an effort to keep it as budget-friendly as possible. Some prices may vary over time due to fluctuations in price but should remain relatively inexpensive.
10Access Tunnel
In any poison counter-themed deck, there’s the unfortunate downside: you have to actually connect an attack with an opponent to give them those counters. Fortunately, there are a few ways to sneak your creatures past your opponent’s defenses.
Access Tunnel is a land thatturns one of your toxic or infect creatures into a sneaky little unblockable creature for a turn. The neat thing about Access Tunnel, and other similar cards, is that if you pump the creature’s attack after the ability resolves, it will remain unblockable.
9Fynn, the Fangbearer
Fynn is one of those weird cards that will do a lot under the right conditions. On its own, it can add two poison counters to your opponents whenever a creature with deathtouch deals damage to them. It either forces your opponents to make bad blocks or to start counting those poison counters.
Fynn synergizes very well with another card on this list, Saryth, the Viper’s Fang. Since Saryth gives all your tapped creatures deathtouch, they’ll also give two additional poison counters on top of what they were already passing along, thanks to Fynn.
8Duelist’s Heritage
The neat thing with both toxic and infect creatures is that if you give them double strike, your opponent gets hit with double the poison counters. With an enchantment like Duelists’ Heritage, where you’re able to give an attacking creature double strike until the end of the turn, you get to rack up the poison counters twice as fast.
Related:Magic: The Gathering - The Best Infect Commanders
This works better with infect since if your opponent has a creature that’s strong enough to block and kill your attacking creature, the damage replacement effect will add -1/-1 counters to your opponent’s creature before it can deal damage to your creature, potentially reducing it low enough that your creature survives.
7Bloated Contaminator
A 4/4 creature for three mana is already a class above almost everything you’re going to find in that range. Tack on trample, toxic 1, and the ability to proliferate every time it damages an opponent, and you’ve got yourself an incredibly powerful early-game creature.
Bloated Contaminator puts the pressure on early, helping you to add poison counters quickly and spread them across all players with every attack. Since very few creatures with infect or toxic also have trample, loading it up with auras and equipment to modify its attack and defense is a great way to keep it relevant later in the game.
6Mimic Vat
Speaking ofbringing creatures back from the dead, Mimic Vat is a repeatable way to keep your favorite infect or toxic creatures around after they die. You do have to exile the card you are trying to copy, removing it from the game entirely, so watch out for that.
For either smaller creatures with unique effects, like Ichor Rats, or for particularly useful attack triggers, like Grateful Apparition, you can keep triggering those abilities over and over again instead of losing the creature to the graveyard.
5Tyvar’s Stand
It’s always good to keep a combat trick or two in hand when you’re strategy is as creature heavy as the Corrupting Influence deck is. Tyvar’s Stand is particularly good since it helps keep your creatures out of the way of removal and keeps them around against your opponent’s creatures.
Related:MTG – The Best Cards In Phyrexia: All Will Be One Corrupting Influence Commander Deck
The ability to add as much mana as you like to Tyvar’s Stand is best used on creatures with infect, since the damage replacement effect will translate it directly into poison counters. Don’t forget that you’re able to cast it for 0, giving your creature hexproof and indestructible instead of modifying its stats to keep it safe.
4Park Heights Maverick
This busy little creature doesn’t have infect or toxic on its own, but it can still help spread your poison counters through combat damage. When it deals combat damage to a player, or if it would go to the graveyard, Park Heights Maverick proliferates. The more hits it gets in, the more poison counters you get to spread.
It also comes prebuilt with some neat evasion, stopping your opponents from blocking it with creatures with power 2 or less. It also can grow pretty big thanks to its dethrone ability, putting +1/+1 counters on it and then proliferating them higher up if it deals damage to a player.
3White Sun’s Twilight
Sometimes you need more toxic creatures, and sometimes you need toblow up the board. With White Sun’s Twilight, you’re able to take the best of both worlds and be the last one standing with an army at the end of the day.
By spending five or more mana on White Sun’s Twilight, you get to create that many 1/1 Phyrexian Mite tokens with toxic 1, and then destroy everything else in play. While you’re able to’t attack that turn, if your opponents can get enough blockers up, you could potentially have enough Mite tokens in play to finish poisoning them off with one attack.
2Champion Of Lambholt
Easily one of the best creatures for combat-focused decks to run, Champion of Lambholt makes all your creatures unblockable with just a few triggers. Champion of Lambholt gets a +1/+1 counter on it whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control. Then, your opponents can’t block if their creatures have less power than the Champion does.
With even just two or three counters on it, you can remove most of your opponent’s blockers just by playing more creatures. Even if your opponent has a blocker or two up with enough power to block, you can likely play a few extra creatures and push through their defenses.
1Saryth, the Viper’s Fang
If you like forcing your opponents to make difficult decisions with their blocking, then Saryth, the Viper’s Fang should be an easy inclusion. When a creature you control is tapped like if they’re in combat, they have deathtouch.
Now you’re giving your opponents a choice: do they take the damage and the subsequent poison counters, or do they block and are guaranteed to lose a creature to your deathtouch creatures? No matter which option they pick, it’s almost guaranteed to be a win for you.
Next:Magic: The Gathering – The Best Cards In The Phyrexia: All Will Be One Rebellion Rising Commander Deck
