Chimera Commander Comprehensives: +1/+1 Counters Part 3

Chimera Commander Comprehensives: +1/+1 Counters Part 3

Sometimes you want to push the limits of your deck building, and a great way to push this to the limit is to try to make an underserved strategy work. This article continues our Chimera Commander Comprehensives on +1/+1 counters by trying to make the theme work in weak colors: Red, the color we identified as the weakest, and Blue, which came in as a close second. To understand why these colors are weakest for the theme, check out the first article in the series here.


The deck techs will reference functional effects within the theme, namely ways to place +1/+1 counters, ways to increase +1/+1 counters, a few ways to protect or retain +1/+1 counters, and +1/+1 counter payoffs. Each will also include functional effects you need to hit within a Commander deck as well as cover some avenues for increasing synergy. To push the limits of the +1/+1 counter theme we’ll go through three mini deck techs: exiling cards with Laelia, the Blade Reforged, using Deekah, Fractal Theorist to animate our spells, and we’ll top it off with Vadrik, Astral Archmage mixing the tech from the two prior.

True to the impulse draw (exiling from the top of our library) that is heavily featured in our first deck, we’re starting with mono Red to build the best +1/+1 counter deck we can in the weakest color with Laelia, the Blade Reforged (deck list). This deck is all about exiling as much of our library as possible to make Laelia super swole and torch our opponents with a well-timed Chandra’s Ignition. We also have some back ups in Fling, Soul’s Fire, Thud, and the classic strategy of Commander damage to take out individual opponents. With twenty two draw spells, most being impulsive draw, we should have no problem making our Commander a threat which demands removal, making Fling all the sweeter.


To make sure our utility is rounded out we have eleven sources of ramp, as well as six removal spells, including some fun shenanigans with Tibalt’s Trickery and Chef’s Kiss. Most importantly there are eleven dedicated effects revolving around +1/+1 counters, all falling into the placing +1/+1 counters category while Sword of Truth and Justice also gives us a way to increase +1/+1 counters.


Now for the fun part: cards that shine in this specific build that you may have never seen before. Focusing in on the gems relating to our current theme of +1/+1 counters, Arc-Slogger has a heavy cost but lets us add counters at instant speed, which can be a lynch pin for getting to that magical number of 21. While not explicitly +1/+1 counters, Dwarven Armorer gives us the opportunity to add +1/+0 counters (or +0/+1 counters) to further buff power in a very “out there” way…this card is sure to turn heads when you play it. Laeila also lets us benefit from cards that let us exile cards in our graveyard like Efreet Flamepainter and Dreadhorde Arcanist: as well as those that let us exile from our library like Cascade with the super well-fitting Wild-Magic Sorcerer. In terms of functional effects: Vault Robber, Harvest Pyre,and Commune With Lava all synergize with our commander, adding +1/+1 counters and making sure we can contribute to the game. 


What’s better than casting a bunch of spells? Casting a bunch of spells and getting sizable creatures from each cast! Deekah, Fractal Theorist (deck list) lets us do just that and with several artifact tutors we can dig out The Ozolith to make our subsequent fractals larger. With Deekah caring about cast or copy, copy spells are an absolute must have, creating a fractal for the spell that copies as well as the copy. If we manage to Twincast a Sublime Epiphany we’d get a 2/2 and two 6/6’s, the value! Along with copy spells we can also get more value by making copies of our tokens. If we’ve managed to proliferate some counters with Inexorable Tide or Flux Channeler, we could have a 10/10 to copy and Deekah can make those big beaters unblockable. In case we have some challenges getting through with combat, we also run the Pili-Pala and Grand Architect combo to generate infinite mana in order to leverage some copied draw spells to dig for an answer. 


This deck would be an absolute blast to play featuring some spicy finishers in Clone Legion and Mnemonic Deluge, as well as some great ways to make even more fractals in Rite of Replication or Sakashima of a Thousand Faces doubling up our Deekah triggers. Looking at the +1/+1 counter synergies we have, some of the cards draw us a lot like Toothy, Imaginary Friend who refills our hand when leaving the battlefield and Thought Sponge siphoning our opponents’ big draws. We can grow our fractals using proliferate, which is featured on our functional effects like Tezzeret’s Gambit and Fuel for the Cause. If we want to close the game out, Deepglow Skate will double the size of our fractals and Herald of Secret Streams will give all of them unblockable letting us sneak in for lethal. 

Our last deck tech features a new legend from Midnight Hunt, Vadrik, Astral Archmage (deck list). There are several ways this Commander could be built, including some explosive X spell tribal builds, but staying in theme we’re going to force +1/+1 counters. Of course it has a spellslinger theme, but the more exciting part is seeing how far we can get with the two colors together! 


Since we want to cast as many cards that care about counters, we can strive for resolving an Enter the Infinite. And if Vadrik has a lot of power, we could chain a few copies of Soul’s Fire or Chandra’s Ignition using Thousand-Year Storm. Since we want to change the Day-Night cycle, this deck features a plethora of Instants so we can easily cast no spells during our turn without losing our turn. The Ozolith once again makes an appearance, giving us a safety net for our counter investment and letting us set up a big Walking Ballista to shoot down pesky creatures (or opponents). 


Looking at the table above one of the first things you may notice is that the +1/+1 counters category is broken out into functional effects within the theme. If we roll these effects up this deck features twenty two cards that care about +1/+1 counters, which is quite the feat excluding the strongest colors. This deck has solid draw and several tutors to help us get Artifacts that help power the deck like Contagion Engine or filling gaps if we’re short on ramp a la Crystalline Crawler. Some of the best tech in this deck is how the +1/+1 counter synergies also ramp our spell slinging. Expanded Anatomy and Stealth Mission reduce our following casts by two each, and if we have Inexorable Tide in play each spell we cast ramps us even more. With tonnes of draw and pseudo-ramp in cost reduction we should be able to have some explosive turns with multiple casts (and maybe even multiple copies). 


There we have it, three +1/+1 counter decks excluding Green, White, and Black. If you’ve taken anything away from this series as a whole, I hope it’s that you can play any theme you love in any deck. It just may take some support from complimentary sub-themes. In part one we took a macro view to the +1/+1 counter theme to assess which colors the theme was strongest in. The second part fleshed out how to work the theme into your deck building and highlighted some strategies for increasing synergy. And of course, the last one covered three unique decks forcing the +1/+1 counter theme into mono Red, mono Blue and the Izzet/Prismari color pair.


If you’re enjoying this series or have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. You can get ahold of me on Twitter or hop into the Chimera Discord where I’m pretty active in the #Commander channel. Since in store play has returned, Chimera hosts Commander night every Tuesday, but if you prefer to play online many players self-organize on the Discord to play games over SpellTable. Hope you enjoyed this one and maybe we’ll cross paths in a game at the store!