Poison counters: infect, toxic and the 10-counter rule

Poison is the other way to lose in Magic. Your life total can be at 40 and it won’t matter: the tenth poison counter ends your game.

The 10-poison rule

Rule 704.5c says a player with ten or more poison counters loses the game. Like dropping to 0 life, it’s a state-based action. It’s checked constantly and happens the moment the tenth counter lands.

Poison counters don’t interact with your life at all. Lifegain doesn’t remove them. Going up to 100 life doesn’t push the limit back. The only way out is a card that specifically removes them or stops you from getting them.

Where poison counters come from

Infect

Infect is a keyword from Scars of Mirrodin. It changes what the damage does instead of adding to it:

• Damage to a player gives them that many poison counters instead of making them lose life.
• Damage to a creature puts that many -1/-1 counters on it instead of marking damage.

So a 2/2 infect creature hitting you unblocked leaves your life total where it was and gives you 2 poison. It works with any damage, not only combat: if an infect creature deals damage through an ability, that’s poison too. Glistener Elf, Blighted Agent and the land Inkmoth Nexus are the cards most infect decks are built around.

Toxic

Toxic came with Phyrexia: All Will Be One in 2023. It stacks on top of the damage instead of replacing it:

• A creature with toxic 2 that deals combat damage to you deals that damage normally and gives you 2 poison counters.
• Only combat damage to a player triggers it. Damage to creatures and noncombat damage don’t.
• If a creature has more than one toxic ability, add them up. Toxic 2 plus toxic 1 is a total toxic value of 3.

Toxic creatures are usually small, so they chip in 1 or 2 poison per hit. The real damage tends to come from pumping a creature’s toxic value or proliferating.

Cards that hand out poison directly

Some cards give poison counters without any damage at all. Ichor Rats gives every player a poison counter when it enters. Other Phyrexian cards do it on attack or on a spell trigger.

Proliferate speeds it up

Proliferate puts one more counter of each kind on any number of permanents and players you choose. That includes poison counters on your opponents. One proliferate across a 4-player table can add a poison counter to every opponent at once. See how proliferate works for the full rules.

The Phyrexia: All Will Be One cards also care about poison through corrupted. A corrupted ability turns on as soon as an opponent has three or more poison counters.

Poison in Commander

Commander doesn’t change the poison number. You start at 40 life but still lose at 10 poison. A full infect deck needs a quarter of the damage a normal deck needs, which is why many playgroups mention infect when they talk about power level before the game.

Poison in Two-Headed Giant

In Two-Headed Giant the two players on a team share a life total and share poison counters too. A team loses at 15 poison, not 10. If you proliferate and both players on the other team are poisoned, only one of them gets the extra counter, since it’s one shared pool (rule 701.34b).

Keeping track

Poison is easy to lose track of because it sits next to the life total and nobody is looking at it. A d10 per player works for 1v1. In multiplayer, especially with proliferate, it’s easy to miss a counter.

Lotus has a poison counter for each player that you turn on from the counters menu. At 10 that player is marked as dead by poison, and the game recap lists poison as the cause.