Corrupting Influence Precon: Decklist, Value, and Verdict

Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa

Flying, vigilance, toxic 2 Corrupted — At the beginning of your end step, each opponent who has three or more poison counters exiles the top card of their library face down. You may look at and play those cards for as long as they remain exiled, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast those spells.

Singles value

$147.70

TCGplayer market, 80 cards, basic lands counted at $0

Sealed price

$312.07

TCGplayer price for the box · singles are 0.5× that

New cards

10 / 100

First printings in this deck

Bracket

Core, out of the box

Is Corrupting Influence worth buying?

from Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander Decks: Are They Worth It? by Sean Migalla

I love decks that use poison counters. They often put a ticking clock on the game, preventing things from going too long and forcing players to make more rash decisions. Corrupting Influence is a great starting infect/toxic deck if that sounds like the kind of Commander games you’d be interested in playing.

The deck is built well out of the box but there’s also room to play with it and make it more powerful, a great trait for any precon. Newer and more experienced players alike have reasons to pick this deck up.

How Corrupting Influence plays

Corrupting Influence ‘s commander, Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa, can be very powerful if allowed to stay on the board. Ixhel is a powerful attacker: you can start stealing cards from players each turn after two attacks against the same opponent. This deck is themed around poison counters, which I was a little surprised to see in a Commander precon.

Your main goal is to get poison counters onto each opponent as quickly as you can. Using cheap creatures with infect or toxic can make it easy to do this if your opponents aren’t dropping creatures on turns 1 and 2. This allows you to get Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa online faster and start proliferating those counters. It’s very difficult for your opponents to stop you from winning at a certain point when you’re repeatedly proliferating with a card like Karn's Bastion.

You may want to start by spreading out poison counters and making sure there’s at least one on each opponent to maximize your proliferation effects. This also allows you more access to extra cards through Ixhel’s triggered ability.