With the printings of Sword of Truth and Justice and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Cubes got a huge boost for counter-motivated strategies. I'm saying counter-motivated and not counter-centered, since I don't think there are enough cards viable whose inclusion is mainly cementing a Counter-archetype. However, many strong cards that already proved their worth in cube use counters, Umezawa's Jitte, Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker, Tangle Wire, Deep Forest Hermit, Everflowing Chalice, Hexdrinker, Student of Warfare, Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, every Planeswalker and maybe some other cards as well. All those cards don't need proliferate to be strong, but it would increase their playability further if there were possible proliferation-possibilities, and vice-versa, proliferating cards would benefit from the inclusion of counter-using cards.
What are cards you use or think are playable, that are basically capable of taking the exact (or close enough) spot of another card already existing in cubes, but that also have counter-synergies?
An example coming to mind is Staggershock, for which there exist several possible options with different advantages, but Staggershock supports the spells-matters archetype and is thus preferred by some cubers.
I personally think we're not quite at the point were one could really try to assemble counter-synergies in a draft reliably, but the Sword and Yawgmoth already walked a long distance to get us closer. What do you all think?
I've had +1/+1 counters as an archetype come in and out of my cube for the last 5 years and I think it might finally be good enough to stay. I've mostly run in in simic with backup support from black. here are the cards that I think are cubeable that can be role players, as well as just fun cube cards depending on your power level.
I think that should cover most of the cubeable cards that play with counters. Its a really fun archetype to play around with! There are tons of other option in simic as well if you have a larger cube or lower powered environment. Hadana's Climb was pretty good for my cube for a while.
Gonna be the eternal "This card is more busted than you think it is" voice and recommend Nissa, Who Shakes the World if you're looking to support proliferate/counters with cards that do more than just that. She is definitely the most powerful draw (tied with Yawgmoth, though in slightly different directions) toward proliferate/counters strategies in my cube. After those two, it probably drops to Sword of Truth and Justice and Curse of Predation.
I support EDH and Oathbreaker in my Cube and a counter-theme has been more and more present.
Some recommendations:
Chasm Skulker is playable on its own, but very scary with even minimal support. Ixidron does not remove counters on your creatures, so it can be quite strong in a counter-deck. Disciple of Bolas can break a stalemate when used on a boosted creature.
Similarly, Prime Speaker Zegana, Greater Good, Traverse the Outlands and Rishkar's Expertise give you a nice payoff for having boosted creatures with a lot of strength. Spikeshot Elder becomes scary with some counters and mana. Dreamstealer is another good target for counters. Gyre Sage and Incubation Druid provide a nice mana boost for counters and Champion of Lambholt makes your creatures unblockable at some point. Evolution Sage is a very strong proliferate enabler, maybe the strongest we have. Just imagine her and Fertilid as a ramp-engine. The synergies are endless. Fathom Mage is another strong payoff card.
The magic of this theme is, that most cards are quite playable on their own, like Verdurous Gearhulk. But in combination with a support card, they become gross. Stuff like Hardened Scales, Doubling Season or Corpsejack Menace makes sure that you can do silly stuff, but they suffer from being not good on their own, compared to other cards I named. So the question is, how deep do you want to support this theme and depending on that, you can decide what to add.
With the printings of Sword of Truth and Justice and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Cubes got a huge boost for counter-motivated strategies. I'm saying counter-motivated and not counter-centered, since I don't think there are enough cards viable whose inclusion is mainly cementing a Counter-archetype. However, many strong cards that already proved their worth in cube use counters, Umezawa's Jitte, Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker, Tangle Wire, Deep Forest Hermit, Everflowing Chalice, Hexdrinker, Student of Warfare, Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin, every Planeswalker and maybe some other cards as well. All those cards don't need proliferate to be strong, but it would increase their playability further if there were possible proliferation-possibilities, and vice-versa, proliferating cards would benefit from the inclusion of counter-using cards.
What are cards you use or think are playable, that are basically capable of taking the exact (or close enough) spot of another card already existing in cubes, but that also have counter-synergies?
An example coming to mind is Staggershock, for which there exist several possible options with different advantages, but Staggershock supports the spells-matters archetype and is thus preferred by some cubers.
I personally think we're not quite at the point were one could really try to assemble counter-synergies in a draft reliably, but the Sword and Yawgmoth already walked a long distance to get us closer. What do you all think?
G
Creatures:
Experiment One
Scavenging ooze
jadelight ranger
rishkar, peema renegade
biogenic ooze
Voracious Hydra
Planeswalkers:
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar
Spells:
Hardened Scales
Curse of Predation
USimic G
Master Biomancer
Roalesk, Apex Hybrid
Hydroid Krasis
Ezuri, Claw of Progress
B
Carrion Feeder
Knight of the Ebon Legion
Drana, Liberator of Malakir
Flesh Carver
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Spawn of Mayhem
X
Hangarback Walker
Walking Ballista
Triskelion
Crystalline Crawler
Land:
Karn's Bastion
All of those have been in an out and most of them are still in and doing a great job of just being cube cards in general. Going for more of an overall prolifferat, other notable cards for counters include: Enclave Cryptologist, Joraga Treespeaker, Meren of clan nel toth, Parallax Wave, Skinrender, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. Outside of Blue, Green, and Black there are also Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice, knight of autumn, and ravager wurm.
I think that should cover most of the cubeable cards that play with counters. Its a really fun archetype to play around with! There are tons of other option in simic as well if you have a larger cube or lower powered environment. Hadana's Climb was pretty good for my cube for a while.
Gonna be the eternal "This card is more busted than you think it is" voice and recommend Nissa, Who Shakes the World if you're looking to support proliferate/counters with cards that do more than just that. She is definitely the most powerful draw (tied with Yawgmoth, though in slightly different directions) toward proliferate/counters strategies in my cube. After those two, it probably drops to Sword of Truth and Justice and Curse of Predation.
Some recommendations:
Chasm Skulker is playable on its own, but very scary with even minimal support.
Ixidron does not remove counters on your creatures, so it can be quite strong in a counter-deck.
Disciple of Bolas can break a stalemate when used on a boosted creature.
Similarly, Prime Speaker Zegana, Greater Good, Traverse the Outlands and Rishkar's Expertise give you a nice payoff for having boosted creatures with a lot of strength.
Spikeshot Elder becomes scary with some counters and mana.
Dreamstealer is another good target for counters.
Gyre Sage and Incubation Druid provide a nice mana boost for counters and Champion of Lambholt makes your creatures unblockable at some point.
Evolution Sage is a very strong proliferate enabler, maybe the strongest we have. Just imagine her and Fertilid as a ramp-engine. The synergies are endless.
Fathom Mage is another strong payoff card.
The magic of this theme is, that most cards are quite playable on their own, like Verdurous Gearhulk. But in combination with a support card, they become gross. Stuff like Hardened Scales, Doubling Season or Corpsejack Menace makes sure that you can do silly stuff, but they suffer from being not good on their own, compared to other cards I named. So the question is, how deep do you want to support this theme and depending on that, you can decide what to add.