MTG Phyrexia: All Will Be One shakes up poison counters, proliferate

Every Magic: The Gathering set contains a wide variety of counters that players track throughout the game. This staple part of gameplay will be a core aspect of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, which will bring new twists on poison alongside introducing a new kind of counter, Wizards of the Coast announced today.

Historically, Phyrexians are all about controlling counters from poison to powerfully wielding Proliferate to rapidly expand all of your counters. This theme continues in ONE, releasing on Feb. 10, in the set’s key mechanics.

Poison counters return in ONE, but the mechanic does have additional mechanical depth that it didn’t have in previous sets. The Toxic mechanic on cards gives players poison counters while also allowing the creature to deal combat damage to them. This helps attack the opponent at two different levels, threatening a traditional win or an infect win.

Corrupted is a mechanic that lets poison represent something more than a way to win the game. If an opponent has three or more poison counters on them, a card with Corrupted will gain additional effects. This prevents a deck running poison counters from being an all-or-nothing strategy and brings further depth to ONE’s Limited environment.

Poison isn’t the only kind of counter that’s prevalent in the set. Oil counters are debuting in ONE. These counters will synergize differently with each card that uses them. Urabrask’s Forge will create increasingly more powerful Haste tokens based on the number of oil counters on it. Other cards will have their own unique effects.

To support these various counters, Proliferate will return in ONE. Proliferate increases the number of each kind of counter a player controls. This applies to anything from a poison counter, loyalty counter, or +1/+1 counter.