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Doubling Season (Tokens/Counters EDH)

Commander / EDH* Counters GU (Simic)

Yosituna

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Creature (39)

Land (38)

Instant (8)

Sorcery (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Vorel of the Hull Clade

Artifact (12)

Enchantment (5)

Maybeboard

Creature (16)

Artifact (9)

Instant (1)

Land (3)

Sorcery (3)

Enchantment (2)

Begin the counter revolution!

This deck, which used to be a Prime Speaker Zegana Merfolk tribal deck, has now morphed into a Vorel of the Hull Clade counter shenanigans deck. It is focused primarily around +1/+1 counters, but also has pretty strong charge counter and proliferate subthemes. Strengths include ramping, card draw, and creating beefed-up creatures; weaknesses include board wipes and interaction with combo decks. I know the deck is far from perfect, and I am definitely open to suggestions and changes!

This is one of my two "main" commander decks (the other being my Trostani, Selesnya's Voice deck). It's also the deck of mine that is the closest to being fully foiled out. I've even made my own foil proxies, including an oversized copy of Vorel as well as a few of the cards that don't come in foil or aren't foiled in the modern frame, such as Opal Palace and Primal Vigor. (I do make sure I also have the real non-foil copies of those cards with me, in case folks have issues with proxies, but I am just compulsive enough to want things to match.) It will probably be a little while before I get this fully foiled, however, as the few remaining cards tend to be pretty pricey in foil.

Deck All-Stars:

  • Vorel of the Hull Clade: Where else to start but with the Commander? Double, double, toil and trouble, Vorel is great for both your inner Timmy and your inner Johnny. Create cool synergies with counters! Create some big-ass hydras to send at your opponents! The sky's the limit!

  • Contagion Engine: The -1/-1 counters are handy, but what makes it even better is the DOUBLE Proliferate activated ability. Proliferate those -1/-1 counters, proliferate all your +1/+1 and charge counters, and then do it all again!

  • Cytoplast Manipulator: Get a +1/+1 counter onto an enemy creature (even their Commander!) using one of your many Graft cards (including Manipulator herself), Forgotten Ancient, or Experiment Kraj, then steal it for yourself! Nothing is quite as heartwarming as delivering fatal Commander damage to someone via their own Commander.

  • Darksteel Reactor: Let it build up a few counters (maybe 4) and then double (twice if you've got Illusionist's Bracers!). Exponential growth means it doesn't take long to hit 20. (In one game, I let it build up to 4, then used Vorel's ability with Bracers which brought it up to 16 in a single turn. If you have a Doubling Season or a Kiora's Follower, you can even totally finish them off that turn!)

  • Doubling Season and Primal Vigor: What's better than doubling? Redoubling and re-re-doubling! Vorel will double the amount of counters, but with either of these out, he'll quadruple them. With both of them out, he'll octuple them. It doesn't take long for this to get VERY out of hand. Doubling Season is of course better as it is asymmetrical, but even so, you're much better positioned to take advantage of Primal Vigor. (Perhaps refrain from casting it when up against token decks or other +1/+1 counter decks, though.)

  • Eternity Vessel: Vorel's ability makes this ridiculous, with even one doubling (let alone multiples). To give you an idea, let's say you have 16 life when you cast it. Vorel will double that to 32 counters, giving you that much life the next time you play a land. Give him a set of Illusionist's Bracers and you'll have 96 life (32 + 64). Have a Doubling Season out along with your Bracers, and instead you'll get 32 added for the first doubling, leaving you with 48 life, and then another 96 added for the second doubling, leaving you at 144. (I'm an English person and not a math one, so the numbers may be slightly off, but you get the idea: exponential growth is bananas.) Let this happen once or twice and you will have thousands and thousands of life, and the only way you will probably die is by Commander damage or some other odd wincon.

  • Fertilid: Repeatable ramp is wonderful in Commander, and the fact that you'll get a lot more than two uses out of this dude with Vorel around makes it even better.

  • Forgotten Ancient and Managorger Hydra: Both of these creatures will grow so huge so quickly (and even more so in a multiplayer game!). You'll average at LEAST one +1/+1 counter per player turn.

  • Gilder Bairn: Not all that great by himself, just because it can be tricky to tap him and he mostly replicates the ability of the Commander (though he can also double planeswalker loyalty counters, I don't have any planeswalkers in this deck). Where he really shines is in tandem with Experiment Kraj. If you have both of them out, tap Kraj to add a +1/+1 counter to Bairn, and now you're cooking with gas! You can now spend a few mana and untap Kraj to double counters on one permanent; tap to add a +1/+1 counter to something; rinse and repeat as long as you have mana.

  • Illusionist's Bracers: This artifact is insane with activated abilities. Guess what kind of abilities most of our creatures have, including our Commander? If it's worth doing once, it's worth doing twice for free! And with doubling, that means exponential growth.

  • Kiora's Follower and Thousand-Year Elixir: Boring but useful; the more you can untap Vorel and co., the more often you can use their tap abilities. Elixir has the bonus of allowing those tap abilities to be used as though the creature had haste.

  • Lux Cannon: Tap to add a counter as soon as this enters the battlefield; double that twice and somehow untap it (not hard to do in a single turn with cards like Vorel, Gilder Bairn, Illusionist's Bracers, Kiora's Follower, Thousand-Year Elixir, etc.) and it'll be ready to pop and take out any permanent your opponents control. (Including lands, if necessary!)

  • Opal Palace: Especially if folks like to kill poor Vorel for posing a threat, this will come in handy; every time he comes back he will be beefier and harder to kill (and have lots of +1/+1 counters on himself that he can double to make himself even beefier!).

  • Trygon Predator: Great for repeatable artifact and enchantment removal. The fact that it has flying makes it both more evasive as an attacker, and allows you to block flying attackers (which can be a problem since the deck leans more towards the green than the blue side of things).

  • Viral Drake: The fact that the Proliferate activated ability here is not a tap ability is super-helpful, since it means you can use it multiple times a turn as long as you've got the mana. It's also good that this is an Infect creature (with flying for evasion, even!), and can get the infection train started rolling up on your opponent all by itself. They let one attack through, giving them one poison counter, and suddenly they'll find those counters racking up.

For the most part this is much less of a combo deck than many; it just has lots and lots of synergy. Still, here are some particularly helpful combinations of cards to remember (leaving out any combos with Vorel himself since pretty much everything in this deck has amazing synergy with him):

Cards I am currently considering adding:

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Revision 3 See all

(6 years ago)

Date added 10 years
Last updated 6 years
Exclude colors WBR
Key combos
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

40 - 0 Rares

21 - 0 Uncommons

12 - 0 Commons
Cards 105
Avg. CMC 3.16
Tokens Squid 1/1 U
Folders EDH Simic, Vorel
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