MTG Infect: All 45 Cards, Rules + Poison Counters

Infect changes what damage does. A source with infect doesn’t take life off a player — it hands them poison counters instead, one per point of damage. Collect ten and you lose the game on the spot, no matter how much life you had a second earlier. Against creatures, infect damage arrives as −1/−1 counters that never wear off at end of turn.

That is the whole mechanic, and it is why a 1/1 for one mana is a legitimate threat. What almost nobody writing about infect mentions is that the mechanic is finished. We pulled every infect card in paper Magic from Scryfall today and audited the roster card by card against oracle text: there are 45 of them, they were printed across three sets in a 224-day window between October 2010 and May 2011, and Wizards has not printed a forty-sixth in the fifteen years since. Poison, on the other hand, is alive and well — the newest poison card in Magic is two months old.

This guide covers the rules verbatim from the Comprehensive Rules, all 45 infect cards with current prices, the 13 cards that grant infect to something else, how infect differs from toxic and poisonous, and a mono-black Commander core built and price-checked programmatically at $45.06.

What infect actually does

Infect is a static ability defined at rule 702.90 of the Comprehensive Rules. It works by replacing the normal results of damage with two different results, one for players and one for creatures.

Damage to players becomes poison counters

Rule 702.90b: “Damage dealt to a player by a source with infect doesn’t cause that player to lose life. Rather, it causes that source’s controller to give the player that many poison counters.”

This is a replacement, not an addition. A 4/4 with infect connecting with a player at 40 life leaves them at 40 life with four poison counters. Nothing about their life total changed. Lifegain does not help them, and neither does a high starting total — which is exactly why infect is so much more dangerous in Commander’s 40-life format than the raw numbers suggest.

Damage to creatures becomes −1/−1 counters

Rule 702.90c: “Damage dealt to a creature by a source with infect isn’t marked on that creature. Rather, it causes that source’s controller to put that many −1/−1 counters on that creature.”

Marked damage disappears during the cleanup step. Counters do not. An infect creature that trades blows with a 3/3 and survives has permanently shrunk it. This also means infect creatures kill anything they damage enough, even indestructible ones — a −1/−1 counter that drops toughness to zero is a state-based action, not destruction, which is a distinction our guide to indestructible in MTG unpacks in more detail.

Infect works from anywhere

Rule 702.90e is short and load-bearing: “The infect rules function no matter what zone an object with infect deals damage from.”

So a Fallen Ferromancer pinging a player for 1 with its activated ability gives a poison counter, not a point of damage. This is worth holding onto, because it is the single biggest difference between infect and toxic — and we will come back to it.

Rule 702.90f adds that multiple instances of infect on the same object are redundant, so enchanting a creature that already has infect with Phyresis does nothing at all.

How many poison counters kill you?

Ten. The rules say so in three separate places, which tells you how central it is.

Two details people get wrong. First, ten is a floor, not an exact count — “ten or more” means an eleventh counter is not a reprieve. Second, the word poisoned is a defined game term meaning one or more counters, and a handful of cards care about it: Septic Rats gets bigger against a poisoned player, and Chained Throatseeker literally cannot attack a player who isn’t poisoned yet.

Every infect card in Magic — all 45 of them

Here is the finding that reframes the whole mechanic. Scryfall’s keyword filter returns 46 paper objects for infect. One of them, Happy Dead Squirrel, is an Unfinity sticker rather than a card. The audited roster is 45 cards, and every single one of them is a creature — 37 plain creatures and 8 artifact creatures. No instant, sorcery, enchantment, land or planeswalker in Magic has ever had infect printed on it.

The 224-day window

Grouping all 45 by first paper printing gives three sets and nothing else:

That is the entire history of the mechanic. Fourteen debuts in 2010, thirty-one in 2011, and zero every year since. Compare that with a keyword like lifelink, whose three biggest printing years are its three most recent — see our MTG lifelink guide for that curve. Infect is the opposite shape: a complete, closed set that will not grow unless Wizards revives it.

The most valuable infect cards

Prices below are the cheapest paper printing on Scryfall, read on 25 August 2026, and they move.

Blightsteel Colossus is a genuine outlier: at $35.91 it is worth nearly as much as the other 44 infect cards combined. Every priced infect card in Magic totals $81.37, of which the Colossus is 44%. Strip it out and the mechanic’s remaining 44 cards cost $45.46 — you can own a complete playset era of a Magic keyword for the price of one modern mythic. Track the swings on our MTG card price tool.

The budget core

34 of the 45 cost under a dollar and the median infect card is $0.29. These are the ones that actually go in decks.

That Flensermite line trips people up. Infect changes what the damage does to the recipient; it is still damage, so lifelink still triggers off it and you still gain the life. The interaction is spelled out across rules 120.3b and 120.3f, and our lifelink guide covers the general case.

What the 45 look like as a group

Two things stand out. Infect is overwhelmingly a black-and-green mechanic, and not one infect card in Magic is multicolored.

And the bodies are tiny by design, because with infect a 1/1 is a tenth of a kill rather than a fortieth:

14 of the 45 have power 1 or less, and the curve peaks hard at power 2. By rarity the mechanic was built for Limited: 23 commons, 14 uncommons, 6 rares, 2 mythics.

The 13 cards that grant infect to something else

Because the roster is closed, the interesting deckbuilding space is not “which infect creatures do I play” but “what can I give infect to.” Thirteen cards in paper Magic hand the ability to another permanent, and several of them are worth more than any infect creature except the Colossus.

Tainted Strike is the reason experienced Commander players count your open black mana when an unblocked Voltron creature is coming at them. A 10-power creature plus one mana is lethal out of nowhere, and it does not care that the target is at 40 life.

A measurement note on that table, because it changed the number. A naive Scryfall search for cards mentioning infect returns 21 results, but Scryfall’s full-text search matches substrings: six of those 21 matched only on infection counter, Infectious, or a token named Cordyceps Infected, and two more (Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Phyrexian Unlife) reference infect without granting it. Auditing on whole words leaves 13.

Infect vs toxic vs poisonous

Magic has printed three separate poison keywords. They are not interchangeable, and the differences are bigger than most guides let on.

Three consequences fall straight out of that table.

Infect replaces; toxic adds. Rule 702.164c says toxic gives poison counters “in addition to the damage’s other results.” A toxic 3/3 hitting you takes three life and gives poison. An infect 3/3 takes no life at all. That makes toxic strictly better as a backup plan and strictly worse as a dedicated one — a toxic deck can win the normal way, but it needs ten separate poison instances where infect needs ten points of damage.

Toxic only works in combat. Infect functions “no matter what zone an object with infect deals damage from” (702.90e). Toxic requires combat damage from a creature. Point a Fallen Ferromancer’s ping at a player and it is poison; a toxic creature’s ping is just damage.

Toxic values are small. Of the 37 toxic cards, 23 are toxic 1, nine are toxic 2, three are toxic 3, one is toxic 4 and exactly one — Paladin of Predation — is toxic 6. Getting to ten with toxic 1 creatures is a real project.

Toxic is also nearly as closed a set as infect: 36 of the 37 come from Phyrexia: All Will Be One and its Commander decks in February 2023, and the only card printed since is Bloodroot Apothecary in Bloomburrow Commander. Zero toxic cards are Standard-legal today — they rotated out — though 32 remain legal in Pioneer. Our current Standard meta guide tracks what actually replaced them.

Toxic headliners

Poison without a keyword at all

Here is the part that surprised us most. 154 paper cards in Magic reference poison counters. Only 82 of them have infect or toxic. The other 74 hand out poison directly, remove it, or care about it — and poison counters are far older than any of the three keywords. The oldest is Leeches, from Homelands in October 1995, and Mirage and Visions in 1996–97 gave us Crypt Cobra, Marsh Viper and Pit Scorpion.

The mechanic is also still being printed. The newest poison card in Magic is The Serpent Society, from Marvel Super Heroes on 26 June 2026 — two months old at the time of writing, and no keyword in sight.

Melira and Phyrexian Unlife deserve special mention as the two dedicated answers. Melira, Sylvok Outcast turns off poison for you entirely and deletes infect from every creature your opponents control — a one-card lock against the whole strategy for $5.16. Phyrexian Unlife does something stranger: it lets you survive below zero life by converting incoming damage into poison, which buys enormous time and then kills you on the tenth counter.

Infect in Commander

There is exactly one infect commander

We checked this two ways, with two different Scryfall query shapes, and both returned the same single name: Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon is the only legendary creature in Magic that has infect. If you want a commander with the keyword printed on it, that is the list.

Skithiryx is a genuinely fearsome commander for the format precisely because Commander’s 40-life buffer means nothing to it. A 4/4 flier with infect that can give itself haste and regenerate is a three-swing clock, and the 21-damage commander rule is irrelevant — ten poison arrives much sooner.

A trap worth naming, because we walked into it ourselves while building this article. Fynn, the Fangbearer is the most popular budget poison commander, and it is extremely tempting to fill a Fynn deck with infect creatures. Don’t. Fynn reads “whenever a creature you control with deathtouch deals combat damage to a player” — and not one of the 45 infect cards in Magic has deathtouch. A Fynn deck wants cheap deathtouch creatures, not infect ones. Two mechanics that look like the same plan on paper share literally zero cards.

A $45 mono-black Skithiryx core

Every card below was filtered programmatically for Commander legality, mono-black color identity and cheapest-printing price, then re-verified card by card against Scryfall — zero color identity violations. This is a 30-card core, not a full 100; add your lands, ramp and interaction around it. Build the rest on our AI deck builder.

Total as priced on 25 August 2026: $45.06, of which the commander is $12.27 and Inkmoth Nexus is $10.83 — the other 29 cards come to $21.96 between them. The six proliferate cards at the bottom are the real engine. Poison counters never go away, so every proliferate effect converts a single connection into a second free counter, and our proliferate guide covers the 96 paper cards that do it.

Where infect is legal

Not a single infect card is banned in any format. That includes Blightsteel Colossus, an 11/11 trampling indestructible infect creature that wins on contact — it is fully legal in Commander. For what is actually banned, see our MTG banned list guide.

Pioneer’s exclusion is an accident of calendar rather than power level. Pioneer’s card pool begins with Return to Ravnica in October 2012; New Phyrexia was May 2011. Infect missed the cutoff by seventeen months and can only ever enter Pioneer by reprint.

Traps and interactions worth knowing

• Protection and infect. Protection from a color prevents the damage, so no poison counters. Phyrexian Crusader’s protection from red and white is why it is the format’s best infect creature in a white-heavy meta.
• Damage prevention still applies. Infect changes the result of damage, not whether it is dealt. Prevent the damage and nothing happens at all.
• Poison counters are not damage and cannot be removed casually. Only a handful of cards remove them; Leeches is the classic, and it charges you damage for the privilege.
• Infect creatures cannot kill planeswalkers efficiently. Damage to a planeswalker removes loyalty counters (120.3c) whether or not the source has infect — no −1/−1 counters, no poison.
• Two infect sources stack normally. Poison counters from different creatures add up; you do not need one creature to connect for ten.
• Corrupted is not in the rulebook. Phyrexia: All Will Be One printed 24 cards with a “Corrupted —” ability that checks whether an opponent has three or more poison counters. We searched the 20260819 Comprehensive Rules file end to end and the word “corrupted” does not appear once — it is not in rule 207.2c’s complete list of ability words either. It works exactly as written on the card; it simply has no entry.

Frequently asked questions

How does infect work in MTG?

A source with infect deals damage to players as poison counters instead of life loss, and to creatures as −1/−1 counters instead of marked damage. Ten poison counters lose the game.

How many poison counters do you need to win?

Ten. Rule 704.5c makes it a state-based action, so the moment a player reaches ten or more, they lose. In Two-Headed Giant the team threshold is fifteen instead.

How many infect cards are there in Magic?

45, after excluding an Unfinity sticker that Scryfall’s keyword filter returns alongside them. All 45 are creatures, and all were printed between October 2010 and May 2011.

Is infect still being printed?

No. No card has been printed with infect since New Phyrexia on 13 May 2011. Poison counters are still being printed — the newest poison card is The Serpent Society from June 2026 — but the infect keyword itself has not returned.

What’s the difference between infect and toxic?

Infect replaces damage to players with poison counters and works from any zone. Toxic gives poison counters in addition to normal damage, and only on combat damage from a creature. Infect is a dedicated win condition; toxic is a rider on a normal beatdown plan.

Does deathtouch work with infect?

They function together fine, but no card has both. Zero of the 45 infect cards have deathtouch, which matters if you are building around Fynn, the Fangbearer — Fynn only triggers on deathtouch damage.

Does lifelink work with infect?

Yes. Infect changes what the damage does to the recipient, but it is still damage, so lifelink still gains you the life. Flensermite has both printed on it.

Can you remove poison counters?

Rarely. Leeches removes all of a player’s poison counters (and deals that much damage to them). Most decks have no answer once counters land, which is the whole appeal of the strategy.

Does infect damage a planeswalker?

It removes loyalty counters like any other damage. Infect’s replacement effects only cover damage to players and to creatures.

Is Blightsteel Colossus banned in Commander?

No. It is legal in Commander, Modern, Legacy and Vintage. In fact none of the 45 infect cards is banned in any format.

What is the best infect commander?

Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon is the only legendary creature with infect, so it is the only one if you want the keyword on your commander. For a poison deck more broadly, Fynn, the Fangbearer at $0.20 and Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa are the popular picks — but they use deathtouch and toxic respectively, not infect.

How much does a full set of infect cards cost?

$81.37 for one of each of the 45, at cheapest paper printing on 25 August 2026. Blightsteel Colossus alone is $35.91 of that; the other 44 come to $45.46.

Why is infect so hated in Commander?

Because 40 life does nothing against it. A 10-poison clock is roughly a quarter of the work of a 40-damage clock, and cards like Tainted Strike can convert a single unblocked attacker into a kill from an empty board at instant speed.

What does “poisoned” mean on a card?

Rule 122.1f defines a player as poisoned if they have one or more poison counters. Septic Rats and Chained Throatseeker both check it.

Does infect work outside combat?

Yes — rule 702.90e says the infect rules function no matter what zone the source deals damage from. Fallen Ferromancer’s activated ping gives a poison counter. Toxic does not work this way; it requires combat damage.

The short version

Infect is a complete, closed, cheap mechanic: 45 creatures, three sets, 224 days, $81.37 for the lot, and not one card banned anywhere. It is also the most efficient clock in casual Magic, because ten poison counters is a quarter of the work of forty damage and no amount of lifegain slows it down. The mechanic will not grow — but poison, the resource underneath it, is still being printed today, and the 74 non-keyword poison cards are where the modern deckbuilding actually happens.

If you want to see what a poison shell looks like alongside the rest of the format, browse public Commander decks, check current prices on the card price tool, or take a break and try Guess That Commander.

Card data, prices and legality pulled from the Scryfall API on 25 August 2026 (cheapest paper printing). Rules quoted from the Magic: The Gathering Comprehensive Rules, file MagicCompRules 20260819, effective 7 August 2026. Prices move; treat them as a snapshot.