Magical Metamorphosis

Well, I might as well talk about the big news in Magic. Yesterday, Maro made these announcements. In short: no more Core Sets after 2015, blocks will only have 2 sets as of fall 2015, and Standard will only contain 3 blocks. These are some big changes of Magic. It basically shifts the entire way it's produced and consumed. And I like it.

For starters, I've never really been too huge of a fan of Core Sets after Tenth (don't ask me why since even I don't know). I get that they're there to bring new players into the game, but it just wasn't fun for everyone else. Maro has said that there will be a supplemental product made that's aimed at bringing new players in (here's hoping for a new Portal). The biggest problem for me with regards to Core Sets is the story. I'd rather see a proper block on Shandalar instead of just news breaks while the real stories get ready.

The two set block idea is fantastic. I understand that a three set block follows more the traditional three-act-structure of storytelling, but it just drags the story on a bit too much in my opinion. Since the stories will be shorter, it'll allow for Creative to run with stories that where once considered "too weak" to stretch across three sets.

Finally, we come to the biggest change: Standard rotation. In essence, it brings a card's lifespan in Standard down to 12-18 months. People are saying that players will leave in droves, but I don't see that. Sure, netdeckers will leave since it'll become too expensive to replace cards quicker (I'll come back to that in a moment), but a lot of jaded players who saw the meta solidify way too fast might be interested in coming back (I know I am). With regards to my earlier statement about prices, I don't think prices will change that much. Yes, there will be a spike in consumption early on so that players get the most out of their cards, but I also see the more limited lifespan of cards acting as a "gouge inhibitor". Players might not be so willing to hand over $40/card if that card is only going to be around for 12 months.

All in all, I look forward to the New New World Order of Magic.

Soapbox: MTGO

So, recently I've been hearing a lot of praise in my local shop for Magic Online (MTGO). I, for one, am not a fan of the system. I've never actually played MTGO (I'll get to my reason for that in a bit) but I have seen other people people play and I have my qualms about it. So, here are my reasons for why I don't like MTGO (but won't get upset if other people enjoy it).

1) Real money, unreal cards. This is the same issue I have with any online game that basically requires in-game purchases in order to enjoy properly. The $10 cost for the program itself is understandable since it probably took a lot of developer time in order to refine how the program applies the different rules and triggers in real-time. It's the paying for absolutely everything else that I have an issue with. Clearly I'm wrong about people being willing to pay for digital versions of cards, given the popularity of the system, but I just see it as a huge money grab. In my opinion, if you want to play Magic online with different people, I would suggest using a system like Cockatrice or Lackey, which is what I use instead of MTGO. They're both free and give you the entire library of cards. They don't apply the rules for you, but as I point out next, that may not be a bad thing.

2) When everything's done for you, you learn nothing. One thing I've heard a lot of people say is that MTGO is "great for new players since they don't have to remember triggers". This is just a bad idea and a dumb statement. If you do something for someone, even if you explain what you're doing, if you never let them do it for themselves, they are going to forget quite frequently. I've seen a couple people come into real Magic games having learned only on MTGO and get flustered because their opponent isn't pointing everything out to them like the program does for them. It's like netdecking, only with the rules. I'd suggest that people learn the paper game first and then go to MTGO in order to watch how the triggers and interactions they learned on paper function at higher-level play.

3) Without people, Magic loses some of its magic. I don't know how many people this applies to outside of myself, but I think that the people are a big part of the game. Being able to read (or tilt) your opponent can often make the difference in an important game. With MTGO, you don't know whether or not your opponent is smirking or shaking when you drop your bomb. You can't see if she's doing calculations or just stalling for time. You can't hear if he's trash talking you or thinking out loud. That may seem like a minor thing to some, but you put yourself at a major disadvantage if you can't tell what you're opponent is doing/thinking because you can't see them. This is another thing I've seen fluster MTGO players in real life. It becomes so easy to to tilt some of them just but simply talking about the latest spoiler or something similar because they're not used to it.

Like I said before, I'm not going to try and take away your enjoyment of MTGO. If you like it, you like it. These are just reasons I don't think it should be called "better than paper Magic".

EDIT: Never let it be said that I don't admit my mistakes. Apparently, you can trade in a complete set of digital cards from recent sets in for a complete set on paper. While that seems like a good deal, I'm still sticking by my first point, since there are a big problem with this deal: unless you're a set collector (for which this deal still might not be great), you probably don't want a copy of every single card in a set. The question for most people will be: is buying the entire set of Theros worth the Elspeth, Sun's Champion and couple other cards they want? Probably not.

Someone said that buying the entire Theros set on MTGO and trading it in saved them $40 (so, it cost roughly $130US), which isn't too bad, but some people aren't as lucky. You see, some people don't live in the US, so we get charged international shipping rates. So, for this one guy's Theros set, if shipped to Canada for example, add on an extra $27 for shipping, another $3 for GST, and maybe a little bit extra if the Canada Border Services Agent decides to levy taxes against that package. So, instead of saving $40, you've now saved $10 and had to wait about 2-3 weeks (USPS is really slow coming up here plus WotC says it can take up to 10 days to process your redemption ticket) in order to get your complete set. That's just for Canada too. I can't imagine what the duties/taxes going to other countries might be, but I'm sure it makes it even less worth your while. And, unless you're an aforementioned set collector, most of that set will sit dormant in a box while you use the 4-5 cards you actually wanted.

So, if you're an American set collector who only wants to collect the latest sets, this deal is great for you. Otherwise, you're pretty SOL.

Elite Archers

The effect for this card is pretty good, but the cost and rarity isn't that great. I know I don't really talk about the rarity of cards all that much, but sometimes it does effect how I see a card. 

For example, in a Zendikar block draft, you could be passed a pack of Worldwake with a Razor Boomerang in it or one with a Cunning Sparkmage. Assuming that you haven't really decided what you're going for yet, which one are you more likely to choose? Now I realize that not all cards can be made to have the same power level (not every planeswalker is going to be Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded) but there should be some consistency in rarity levels. The fact that WotC designs cards mainly for Limited environments such as drafts or sealed events isn't something that should be ignored, but it's also not something that should be used as an excuse either. Having a Burning Oil on a stick is pretty good in a Limited environment, but is it really as powerful as  Back to Basics, Citanul Flute, Gaea's Cradle, Morphling, or even Shivan Gorge? Not for 6 mana on a 3/3 creature. 

It's definitely not the worst example of "why in Urborg is this a rare?!", but it's just not stellar enough to warrant its rank. Not a terrible card, just not a good rare.

Pros: Repeatable Burning Oil

Cons: Costs 6, only a 3/3

Rating: 2/5

Tarmogoyf

This is an okay card. I mean, it's no Cognivore, but it'll do in a pinch. It's a fast drop and it can get fairly powerful, but it has some problems. 

First off, there are ways to get rid of it. Good cards have no way to actually get rid of them because, if they did, they wouldn't be good. That's why cards like Norin the Wary and Progenitus are the best cards in Magic. This card has a bunch of different way to deal with it: Doom Blade, Terror, Unsummon, Vindicate, Bazaar of Wonders, and Threads of Disloyalty to name a few. If you've got a permanent that can end up in your graveyard somehow, it's a dead card because you're just going to waste mana casting it just for it to be destroyed.

Second, it has no evasion. Cards like Aven Envoy and Zodiac Rooster are better because they have some sort of evasion at least. Cards with no evasion can easily be blocked and therefore have no point in swinging, even if the opponent is going to lose a creature or two. They could have some sort of buff spell in their hand and it's not a good idea to risk losing your creature to some Typhoid Rats with Daring Leap cast on it.

Thirdly, it's not a relevant creature type. There's absolutely no support for "Lhurgoyfs" outside of the generic cards like Coat of Arms and Door of Destinies. If you don't have the tribal support for something, it's just going to stand out there on its own with no help from anything else. It won't synergize with your deck at all and you might as well be running other random cards that don't interact with anything else in your deck like Putrid Lecch or Xantid Swarm.

Finally, while this card can grow, it has a power cap. At best, this can be an 8/9 whereas something like Boneyard Wurm can be much bigger depending on how many creatures you have in your graveyard and Kodama of the Center Tree, which is dependent on the number of Spirits you.control. Also, to ensure that you're getting the most out of this card, you'll have to overload your deck with a bunch of different types of cards and make sure they end up in your graveyard.

 All in all, an alright card if you've got the spot.

Pros: Fast drop, can grow over time

Cons: No evasion, dies to removal, not a relevant creature type, power cap

Rating: 1.5/5

See how stupid some of these "that's not a good card because x" arguments can be? Seriously, this card is great. 5/5.

Tweaking Things

Now, never let it be said that I don’t like change. Change is fine, especially when it’s a necessity in order to keep something like Magic from getting stale. However, there’s a fine line between actually necessary change and change for the sake of it and Magic has crossed the line sometimes. Here are my top examples of it being done incorrectly and some of the times it has been done correctly.

Wither/Poisonous – Infect

I’m not about to go on yet another tirade about how much I hate Infect (see this article for my official rant) but I feel I should point out why I see it as a failure in terms of a tweaked mechanic. People inside Magic’s development team have said on the record that all the cards with Infect were going to have Wither and Poisonous originally, but they felt that it would be too wordy so they condensed it down to one word. I agree; two mechanics with fairly lengthy reminder text (especially Poisonous) would have resulted in either creatures that couldn’t have other abilities or creatures that started looking like Takklemaggot. However, I believe that the spirit of Poisonous was betrayed by Infect. Poisonous was originally a set number but Wither was a flexible number. However, I think that more credence should have been given to the fact that a 10/1 creature with Wither won’t kill you outright but a 1/1 Poisonous 10 will. Personally, after giving it a lot of thought, I think that Infect could have been fixed by making it “Infect X” where X is the number of -1/-1 counters or poison counters given out by that creature. I think it fits a little more flavour-wise too. Diseases aren’t really like poison in the sense that a higher dose of poison is deadlier than a smaller dose. Drinking a straight shot of ebola is as deadly as swimming in a pool of it.

-1/-0, -0/-1, -2/-0, -0/-2, +2/+0, +0/+2 counters – -1/-1, +1/+1 counters

Never let it be said that I liked older cards just because they’re old. When my friends play, we usually use dice (d10s or d20s) to mark down how many counters a creature has and if an Ulasht, the Hate Seed enters a Pit Fight with a Greater Werewolf and then Fate Transfers the counters off of Frankenstein’s Monster, that’s (potentially) 4 different types of counters which means 4 different dice! We wouldn’t be able to see Ulhast, the Hate Seed let alone tap it without fear of knocking some of the dice off. Those other power/toughness counters could also ruin other cards’ flavours, such as Spike Cannibal. It absorbs almost everything’s power, but not from the man made up of about 6 different men.

Kamigawa Flip – Innistrad Flip

Yes, I understand that the Kamigawa flip cards may not have had the most space for text as everyone would have liked. They also didn’t have much room for art and they could cause memory problems if someone wasn’t paying close enough attention. However, you want to know what they didn’t do? They didn’t make it obvious what you were drafting in block. They didn’t rely on you having sleeves or special cards that only came in some packs. Finally, they didn’t make you de-sleeve and re-sleeve your cards constantly, causing them to get bent, worn, and otherwise damaged! I have no idea why Kamigawa flip cards are so widely reviled and Innistrad flip cards are loved. The room for text I understand; as someone with glasses, I understand that the small text may have been hard to read for some. Same goes for the art; card art is part of the fun of the game and sometimes it adds a lot especially if it’s good (and most of Kamigawa’s art was stellar). However, the argument of “memory issues” always falls flat for me. Kamigawa flip cards only had a single-use, one-time trigger. For example: Student of the Elements becomes Tobita,Master of Winds when it gets Flying. That’s not a hard trigger to remember. If an opponent is calling you on whether or not it flipped, you can just say “last turn, it got Flying because of X”. Now Innistrad flip cards on the other hand, can have huge memory problems, especially during large games. If an opponent just draws a card and says “go” and you don’t notice, you’ve missed your trigger and you have to time machine any effects that you may have missed which can cause huge problems. Innistrad flips are also a lot less newbie-friendly since they have to constantly remember their triggers as well as their constantly-morphing field. In short, I wish this was one of the concepts from Kamigawa that wasn’t hated out of existence just because it was in Kamigawa.

-1/-1 and +1/+1 Cancellations

I was so happy when WotC made this change. Yes children, back in ye olden days, common sense was not really a factor in Magic and -1/-1 counters did not cancel out +1/+1 counters or vice-versa. I think this confused every single new player because it wasn’t intuitive and made little sense. And again, as I said earlier, the amount of counters that could accumulate on a creature could make it difficult to keep track of them all.

Functional Errata

I’m not going to call out all functional errata here, but I’d like to call attention to two specific types that I consider to be failures. First and foremost is what I call “confusion errata” wherein WotC tries to clarify what’s on a card but just manages to make it much worse. Take for example Oath of Scholars. The text on the card is pretty simple to read. Now look at the oracle text. Seems a bit less clear what the card exactly does, doesn’t it? The most famous example of this type of confusion errata is on Chains of Mephistopheles. Do you want to know what the card actually says? “If an opponent would draw a card that is not the first one drawn in their draw step, they discard a card instead”. How hard was that?!

The second category of bad functional errata is “blanding errata”. This is errata wherein part of the card’s flavour or story is wiped out in favour of “simplicity”. My best example of this is Flying Carpet (which I reviewed here). If the carpet explodes, the guy riding on the carpet should plummet to the ground and die. That’s how it originally worked, but then WotC decided to completely change it for some reason. Another example is Castle, wherein the flavour was that your untapped creatures where protected as long as they weren’t leaving the castle to attack. Now, it’s some sort of magic Green Lantern-esque castle that flies around with untapped creatures wherever they go and can be summoned at will.

Damage on the Stack

This isn’t one that I’d say I was “happy” about, but I don’t really mind the fact that it’s gone. This was why cards with the “flowstone” effect (R: +1/-1) where really powerful. If you let one through, in response to the damage going on the stack, you pump a whole lot of mana into that effect for a lot of damage. Sure, you’d lose the creature, but it resulted in a huge life loss for your opponent.

Mana Burn

Oh God, how I wish mana burn was a thing again. Why? Because then a good chunk of my old cards wouldn’t be useless anymore! Remember Citadel of Pain? Remember how awesome it was to play that down and make your opponent sad because they would either have to play out their hand or take damage every turn? Not anymore! Now your opponent can just tap out and not take any damage. I understand that some people had difficulty remembering simple math, but it prevented stupid things like infinite combos. How satisfying do you think it would feel to do this:
Opponent: “I gain infinite mana with my Myr Galvanizer combo at the end of your turn.”
You: “How much exactly?”
Opponent: “7 quadrillion. Then, I pour all of my mana into my Rocket Launcher…”
You: “I Trickbind the first use.”
Opponent: “Wha…?”

You: “Do you have another mana sink?”

Opponent: “No…”
You: “You take 7 quadrillion minus 2. Good game.”

Fading – Vanishing

This was a great change. Fading often confused new players (and me when I was younger) because it was counter-intuitive to not sacrifice a permanent that, in a seemingly flavourful mechanical sense, had faded out of existence. Vanishing, on the other hand, triggers when you take the last counter off, meaning that you know right then and there to sacrifice it.

New Legend Rule

Wow, this thing is stupid. “If I invite Sarkhan Vol over to my place and someone else comes dressed like him, they explode, but you can also invite Sarkhan Vol to your party and he’ll show up there too somehow”. This could have been changed by either a functional errata adding “but keeps its own name” to every clone effect (a la Sakashima the Imposter, by adding a rule saying that cards that copy other cards don’t cause the originals to explode, or by making a rule saying that Legendary permanent can’t be copied. I know that the “making copies doesn’t make the original go away” kind of defeats the purpose of Legendary, but let’s face it. When Link fought Shadow Link, did Shadow Link have less strength than Link or was he essentially the same? How about the twin clones of Hitler from Superman at Earth’s End? That may be “comic book logic” but this is a game wherein a giant robot infected with goo was saved by the power of friendship because of reasons. And yes, I understand the daunting task of staring down a pair of Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite but that’s a problem that you’ll have to deal with. Just because something poses a tactical problem doesn’t mean it needs to go away. Did Tecumseh (look him up) ask the Americans nicely to bring back a few soldiers so that the numbers were more balanced? No; he made what he had work.

O-Ring Style Wording

We’re all going to miss the old type of wording on cards like Oblivion Ring, but it’s honestly for the best that it’s gone. It confused a lot of players (both old and new) and made cards like that ridiculously powerful (I still fear Auratog because of what it can do with Parallax Wave). Although the new wording is ugly, I think it’s going to be a welcome change.

Okay, this has gone on for far too long, so I’ll leave you with this last tweak, one which I hate more than anything else…

Stories

For those too young to have played during the Urza block, there was a huge overarching story that was told through cards and books. It was a magnificent tale that sucked a lot of readers into the game and brought a lot of players into the story. Look a few years down the road and what do we have? Very little. We went from a story wherein a planeswalker goes around fighting a force that threatens not only his plane, but all planes, building a veritable army of the most powerful people he can find, flying around on a spaceship that has an orbital death laser to… a psychopath who gets punched across the universe because the cops are chasing him. I understand the need to change up the characters in your stories to keep it varied, but can we have some consistency? The storyline used to be relatively streamlined, with events from one block having a direct and palpable effect on the next block. What effect did Zendikar have on Innistrad? What about Innistrad on Return to Ravnica? Nothing really. Yeah, Gideon went to Ravnica because of the events that happened in Zendikar, but what was really accomplished? He and Aurelia argued a lot and that’s about it. How about Tibalt, a character who could have been really cool and interesting? Yeah, he’s somewhere, but I think WotC misplaced him and they’re not looking too hard to find him.

There are characters that show up again and again in the story (namely the original 5 planeswalkers), but their stories are just that: their stories. There no longer seems to be the emphasis on the entire multiverse so much as on a few specific people. Also, with this jumping around and radical shifts in focus, it’s hard to know what’s happening relative to everything else. For example, did you know that the events of Kamigawa happen before Legends? Yeah, I’m not kidding: Kamigawa is a prequel. Tetsuo Umezawa, the guy who killed Nicol Bolas is the descendant of Toshiro Umezawa. Also, Nicol Bolas killed the Myojin of Night’s Reach in order to revive himself, so that means that if Kamigawa happened after Legends, that Myojin wouldn’t be there. There doesn’t seem to be anymore interactions like that to tell people where in the timeline certain events take place. Chandra and Gideon’s timelines seem to be the same since Gideon is always chasing Chandra (well, he used to be). Same goes for Liliana and Garruk. Jace appears in everyone’s timeline, but then again, he’s pretty much treated like Jesus, so there could just be a Jace in every single timeline. Elspeth’s doing her own thing and Bolas, well, if Jace is Jesus then Bolas is Satan.

There’s very little character development, there’s no follow-up, there’s not much effort that seems to be put into the stories anymore. For my final example, let’s look at some things in Innistrad. First off, there has yet to be a good explanation as to where the three Powerpuff Girls were during the first two blocks (Bruna, Light of Alabaster, Sigarda, Host of Herons, and Gisela, Blade of Goldnight (?)). If there was such a looming threat to the entire plane, don’t you think that they would get involved somehow? Yeah, they could have been at war with each other, but I’d imagine that these angels, these creatures of mythical power could multitask. How about Griselbrand, the big bad guy who was in the Helvault? He gave Liliana reason to be on Innistrad, but what happened when he came out? Liliana exploded him within a couple minutes. Finally, there’s Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. I think her story was the biggest misstep of the block, specifically what happened to her after the Helvault was opened. She was given the choice of saving her men and allowing the Helvault to be opened or dying (and presumably allowing the Helvault to be opened still). She chose poorly (in my opinion) and asked for her men’s lives. What happened to her afterwards? Did she have to face the families of those that she indirectly allowed to be killed? How did she handle the guilt of that event? What did her men think of her? Well, we don’t know because there was little story written about her. I was really hoping for Avacyn Restored to be something like “Avacyn’s back and it’s not a good thing”. I was hoping for the last block to be people fighting against her crusading forces as she tried to “purify the land” of non-believers. But, instead we got a stereotypical story of good vanquishing evil because “bad things can’t happen at the end of a story because that makes people sad”.

However, this is the one tweak that I will not blame entirely on WotC. I place some (not a lot mind you, but some) of the blame on the player base. We don’t demand stories anymore and when we do, we settle for “novellas” and articles on WotC’s site that vary in quality. Marketing thinks that we’re morons that only buy sets because there are dragons in them (seriously) and we’re not doing much to improve on that perception. I think it’s high time that we as a community start creating our own stories from the fragments that we’re given and do the job that WotC should be doing. Also, we shouldn’t stop demanding better stories. One of the better written stories of the past few years was for Fblthp (?), a character who didn’t even have his own card, but WotC listened (presumably) to the community’s demands for a story and we got one. Maybe if we band together and demand this change, it will happen.

Actually, that “making up your own story” idea is pretty good. Hmm…

Soapbox Time: The Magic Community

This is honestly something I never thought I would want to say, but here it is: I'm getting sick of Magic. It's not anything to do with design or the game's storyline (although, so work in that department would be nice); it has to do with the people. Now, I know there are a lot of good people out there playing Magic, but this is to address the all-too-common problem of the bad players. Not "bad" players in the sense that they don't know how to play the game well; I mean "bad" in the sense of those people who want you not want to call yourself a Magic player anymore. Those people who will openly berate a new player for not making the same $500 Standard deck that he did and dared to try something new.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I do make fun of my friends whenever they make bad plays, but there's a difference in lightly mocking a tournament regular for not blowing an Oblivion Ring when he had the chance to do so and openly ridiculing a player on their fifth game for trying to run Murder in a Standard deck. This has become a real problem in my eyes and I've seen a lot of new players chased off by it. The other problem that I see is that there is a segregation between casual and tournament players that really makes it difficult for some players to break into the tournament scene. Maybe that's just something that's happening here in Winnipeg (a fairly small market), but I suspect it's happening elsewhere too.

For example, my club used to run Friday Night Magic out of a great little store that didn't focus on Magic (actually, all they carry is a box or two of the latest set). As a result of it's location (far away from the other 3 major Magic stores in the city), a lot of new players showed up to play since they had never had the chance to drive the 15-20 minutes to another store. Soon, regular tournament players started showing up and that's when comments started coming my way. Snarky comments like "I can't believe this newbie didn't believe me when I told him his win-con didn't work" and "It was boring; newbies don't pose a challenge" alongside comments about the store trying to "steal customers" all stung. The saddest part? No one stepped up to say "hey, remember when you used to make stupid/less-than-perfect deck builds when you started?" or anything like that. It was all let through as "part of the game". Due to my work schedule, I've had to start looking for a replacement to run these events. For the post I made about it, I felt the need to include "Must be willing to work in a newbie-friendly environment that supports learning and good sportsmanship". I really shouldn't have to put that in there since it should the the standard by default. However, it seems that that is no longer the case.

Who's to blame for all of this? That question doesn't matter; people know who's to blame. How do we stop it? Well, I for one think that we as a community should stop looking at new players simply in the context of how bad they may play the game. If you see someone who is new and struggling to make the right deck choices/plays, ask them if they'd like some help. Don't tell them how to play the game explicitly, show them the path. Instead of "you need to get rid of that leveled-up Student of Warfare" say "which do you think is the biggest problem: the Student of Warfare or the Homarid Shaman?" Don't play at tournament speed with new players; take your time and allow them the chance to react to everything that you do. Finally, explain what you're doing. Not everyone knows how each infinite combo works, so be sure to explain it just before it goes off. Personally, I like to tell new players when they should try and stop me so that they know how to recognize when a combo is coming together. Losing to a newbie isn't the end of the world. Remember, Jon Finkel, Carlos Romao, and Shahar Shenhar were all newbies at one point.

In short, as my friend Mike would (probably) say: "Can everyone just stop being jerks for, like, 5 minutes?"

Infect

Okay, it has become very clear to me that I need to explain my position on Infect. In short: I absolutely despise Infect. Is it because I hate poison counters? Quite the contrary, I actually like the idea of poison counters as a way to slowly chip away at your opponent's health. But, there's the key: slowly chip away at their health, which is the opposite of what Infect does.

Now, for those of you who don't remember back when poison counters were a fair and likable mechanic, I'll give you an example.

This is Marsh Viper, one of the original cards with poison counters. Why is it so much more balanced than a creature with Infect? First, look at it's cost. It's a 1/2 for 4. For what it does, that's actually a fair price. Second, and most importantly, it gives a set number of poison counters, unlike Infect, which varies on the power of the creature. But, rather than pull out card comparisons, I think it would be best if I just ran down some arguments that I've come up against and explain my position on them.

#1 - "Infect is balanced because there are cards to deal with poison counters"
Actually, there's only 1 card in all of Magic that removes poison counters: Leeches from way back in Homelands. Now, if you're talking about cards that prevent you from getting poison counters, that's not necessarily true. You're probably thinking of Melira, Sylvok Outcast as a solution to Infect, and it is; if you're running green! Where's the white, blue, black, or red solution for Infect? You can't just claim "there's a solution" when only 1 colour in block has a viable method of prevention and only 1 card in the entire game exists that can solve the problem.

#2 - "Infect creatures are really expensive"
For the most part, yes this is true. A lot of creature with Infect are overcosted in a vain attempt to make Infect balanced. However, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon is a reasonably priced 4/4 Flying Infect with the possibility of Haste and regeneration for 5. Hand of the Praetors gives players poison counters and powers up Infect creatures for 4. Blighted Agent is unblockable for 2!

#3 - "There aren't that many good creatures with Infect"
You mean besides the ones I just mentioned? Well, even if that were true, there are a multitude of ways you can give other creatures Infect. Grafted Exoskeleton gives a creature +2/+2 and Infect for 6 (or 4 if you have the right cards out) and Glistening Oil and Phyresis give creatures Infect as well. Tainted Strike is an instant-speed powerup and it gives Infect. Finally, Triumph of the Hordes could be seen as a better Overrun since it's cheaper and much more deadly.

#4 - "It's just as unfair as Wither and you never complained about that"
I don't even think this warrants a response. Wither was a much better mechanic because it forced you to chose whether or not it was better to kill an opponent's creature in exchange for weakening one of your own or letting it deal you damage so that you could swing with a better creature. One of my friends has an excellent Wither deck that I find is one of the most tactical decks I've played against recently for that reason. Infect is not a choice. You have to block a creature with Infect whether you want to or not because you will die and there is no way to recover from a hit with Infect.

Those are the biggest arguments I've come across in favour of Infect. If you have anything you'd like to say about Infect and attempt to convince me why it's balanced, post them in the comments below. I am willing to take back all of this if someone can prove to me that Infect is a balanced mechanic, but I find that very unlikely.