Viridian Betrayers

Infect is usually printed onto a card unconditionally; here it is gated behind a board state, switched on only once an opponent already carries at least one poison counter. That makes the 3/1 a closer rather than an opener: it does no poison damage until something else has drawn first blood, at which point its three power converts straight into poison counters on players and -1/-1 counters on blockers. The design logic is a deliberate escalation curve. A poison strategy wants to land early infect threats to start the count, then deploy this one as a lethal accelerant once the table is already committed to the loss condition. The wrinkle is that the static ability reads "an opponent," not a single named opponent, so in a multiplayer game one poisoned player is enough to grant infect against everyone at once, and a single early prick can spiral fast. The 3/1 frame is the cost of that payoff: it dies to almost anything, so it is built to swing while the poison clock is already ticking rather than to grind through combat. It rewards going all in on the infect plan rather than splashing a lone proliferate engine, because off the curve it is just a fragile beater dealing ordinary damage. A second-wave card for a deck that has already decided what it is.