It Just Keeps Going and Going and ...
Verazol, the Split Current is a 2-mana commander that keeps up in power as the game goes on and as more mana in pumped into it. It's also a big pile of +1/+1 counters straight out of the command zone for certain cards to abuse. And it's a mana battery that can super-charge all the Kicker spells in the deck into punching - er, kicking - above their weight class. This deck tries to abuse all these aspects of Verazol to create a fun and potent Simic counter-themed deck.
Kickin' it Old School
Most of the Kicker cards are roleplayers in the deck - they're part of the ramp, card draw, and removal packages that keep the deck structually sound. But with Verazol they can become game-changers.
Everflowing Chalice, Skyclave Relic, Reclaim the Wastes, Grow From the Ashes, Primal Growth, Vastwood Surge, and Hunting Wilds ramp me up and ensure I'm getting all the mana I need to cast my spells, even moreso when Verazol is involved, and some of them can even contribute to creating a powerful board.
Thieving Skydiver, Mold Shambler, Blink of an Eye, Into the Roil, Rushing River, and Inscription of Abundance allow us to disrupt our opponents while becoming far more devastating and even highly advantageous for us with Verazol.
Jace, Mirror Mage, Sphinx of Lost Truths, Field Research, and Inscription of Insight are all solid card draw and card selection options that become quite a bit better when you get two of them.
Myriad Construct, Wolfbriar Elemental, Strength of the Tajuru, and Rite of Replication are the finishers for the deck, each capable of creating dominating boardstates by themselves, and especially when doubled with Verazol.
Twice as Nice
A major theme of this deck is doubling - if Verazol is doubling the effectiveness of my Kicker spells, why not double up on the amount of times I get to cast my Kicker spells?
Mystic Sanctuary, Regrowth, Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary, Eternal Witness, and Nissa, Vital Force let me recur my Kicker spells multiple times over, ensuring that I always have cards to abuse with Verazol.
Twinning Staff only really works with my commander - I have no other spell copy effects in my entire deck - but having an effective second copy of Verazol in play is extremely powerful, as tripling my mana's worth of each kicker spell I cast can get out of hand fast. I also play enough cheap instant and sorcerys that I can get some decent value off the 7-mana ability in the late game.
Mana Reflection doesn't double my kicker spells directly, but once I'm doubling my mana, plays like using copies of Blink of an Eye to bounce Eternal Witness to recur Kicker spells start becoming a lot more feasible. Multikicker cards like Strength of the Tajuru and Wolfbriar Elemental double in effectiveness as well.
But why stop at doubling up on spells? My commander comes in with a bunch of counters, so why not double those too?
Doubling Season, Kalonian Hydra, Deepglow Skate, and Vorel of the Hull Clade can all double or quadruple the counters on Verazol and turn him into a giant scary monster. Or they help ensure that even if I'm casting Verazol for relatively little mana, I'm still getting plenty of counters to supercharge my kicker spells. Branching Evolution goes here too once it becomes a more widely available card.
They don't double, but Pir, Imaginative Rascal, Flux Channeler and Karn's Bastion do help the +1/+1 counter spreading cause as well.
Of Dice and Men
... And they also help with a number of other cards in the deck that utilize counters!
Gyre Sage, Everflowing Chalice, Astral Cornucopia, and Crystalline Crawler benefit greatly from having their counters doubled again and again until I'm producing oodles of mana.
Toothy, Imaginary Friend, Fathom Mage, and Prime Speaker Zegana can draw ungodly amounts of cards when doublers are involved.
It wouldn't be a Doubling Season deck without Planeswalkers, and Garruk, Primal Hunter, Nissa, Vital Force and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon are all strong payoffs for putting a planeswalker straight to ultimate. Getting a squadron of Jace, Mirror Mages is pretty swell too.
Moving counters around with The Ozolith, Slippery Bogbonder and Forgotten Ancient work very nicely with the doublers as well.
Finally, straight up winning the game is a pretty strong payoff for doubling things, and Simic Ascendancy does so very directly. Strength of the Tajuru wins a bit less directly, but it doesn't take much work for this card to turn even a lowly Eternal Witness into a world-ending threat when you've got Doubling Season on your side.
Here's the deck, let me know what you think!
Verazol by Type and Cost
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Verazol by Function:
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Incubation Druid - I don't think I currently have enough cheap and effective ways to give this card a counter (outside of Adapting) for it to be worth running, but I might in the future.
Wild Growth/Utopia Sprawl - Efficiently costed ramp definitely has a place in this deck, I'm just not sure where that place is at the moment. More testing is needed to determine how these cards can fit in.
Lightning Greaves - Protecting my creatures is nice, I'm just a little wary of running too many "do-nothing" cards that are only helpful when my engine is online. Also shroud can be problematic with cards like Strength of the Tajuru or The Ozolith. The haste also isn't that relevant aside from Kalonian Hydra and a couple of creatures with tap abilities.
Evolution Sage - Proliferate is only a minor subtheme in my deck, and I think Flux Channeler performs that role better. I could be wrong though, both on whether Channeler is the better choice of proliferater over Sage as well as the number of proliferate cards this deck can support.
Primal Vigor - A second copy of Doubling Season would be excellent. This card is not that. I'm very much worried that my opponents can take advantage of this more than I'm able to. I'm already weak to token swarm-type strategies and this card exposes that hole even further, and giving the Edgar Markov player double the Vampires and double the counters when he attacks seems like a losing play.
Nissa, Who Shakes the World - I'm only running 11 Forest cards, so on average this will be ramping me about 3-4 extra mana, but that's not bad for a 5-drop, and making creatures that come in with counters is synergistic with what my deck's doing. The ultimate isn't that scary, which is actually a plus since people are less likely to dogpile Doubling Season if my deck isn't filled to the brim with planewalkers that have Tamiyo, the Moon Sage-level ultimates, but at the same time ramping a whole bunch and protecting myself from Acidic Slimes and such definitely do help the cause. The card's failcase, though (barely drawn any Forests, don't have the board to protect it, having too many 5-drops) is pretty bad and pushes me towards not including it.
Arcane Denial/Counterspells in general - Definitely feel like this deck could use more stack interaction to help deal with removal pointed my way or cards that I otherwise don't have good answers to, like giant Comet Storms, but I'm uncertain what to cut without breaking apart the core identity of the deck.
Wild Growth/Utopia Sprawl - Efficiently costed ramp definitely has a place in this deck, I'm just not sure where that place is at the moment. More testing is needed to determine how these cards can fit in.
Lightning Greaves - Protecting my creatures is nice, I'm just a little wary of running too many "do-nothing" cards that are only helpful when my engine is online. Also shroud can be problematic with cards like Strength of the Tajuru or The Ozolith. The haste also isn't that relevant aside from Kalonian Hydra and a couple of creatures with tap abilities.
Evolution Sage - Proliferate is only a minor subtheme in my deck, and I think Flux Channeler performs that role better. I could be wrong though, both on whether Channeler is the better choice of proliferater over Sage as well as the number of proliferate cards this deck can support.
Primal Vigor - A second copy of Doubling Season would be excellent. This card is not that. I'm very much worried that my opponents can take advantage of this more than I'm able to. I'm already weak to token swarm-type strategies and this card exposes that hole even further, and giving the Edgar Markov player double the Vampires and double the counters when he attacks seems like a losing play.
Nissa, Who Shakes the World - I'm only running 11 Forest cards, so on average this will be ramping me about 3-4 extra mana, but that's not bad for a 5-drop, and making creatures that come in with counters is synergistic with what my deck's doing. The ultimate isn't that scary, which is actually a plus since people are less likely to dogpile Doubling Season if my deck isn't filled to the brim with planewalkers that have Tamiyo, the Moon Sage-level ultimates, but at the same time ramping a whole bunch and protecting myself from Acidic Slimes and such definitely do help the cause. The card's failcase, though (barely drawn any Forests, don't have the board to protect it, having too many 5-drops) is pretty bad and pushes me towards not including it.
Arcane Denial/Counterspells in general - Definitely feel like this deck could use more stack interaction to help deal with removal pointed my way or cards that I otherwise don't have good answers to, like giant Comet Storms, but I'm uncertain what to cut without breaking apart the core identity of the deck.
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Coralhelm Chronicler - I do think that with the deck sitting at 20~ kicker cards I am running enough to make this card's ETB fairly consistent, but whiffing on this is a huge blow, and I'm definitely kicking spells on average less than once per turn, so this guy's mostly just an awkward Merfolk Looter that costs 1 more mana. Running more consistent card draw or filtering would just be better.
Roost of Drakes - My opinion of this card can be summed up as follows: If I kick Roost of Drakes and copy it with Verazol, the Split Current, and every turn or other turn or so I'm casting a kicked spell that generates me an Air Elemental worth of stats, then the card is quite good and is worth the cost. If I am unable to copy it with Verazol and only get 1 drake every turn or every other turn, than the card is slow and inefficient and isn't worth the cost. I think the latter situation is going to be happening enough times that I'd rather not play the card, but I'm willing to give it a try if my deck functions differently than how I expect it to.
Sea Gate Stormcaller - My deck currently has 8 spells that this card can copy (not including cards that are worthless to copy like Heroic Intervention). 2/8 of those, cards like Regrowth, are excellent and definitely worth copying one or more times. Another 2/8 of those, cards like Reclaim the Wastes, are incredibly disappointing to copy and aren't really worth the mana I'm spending. The other 4 are all instant-speed removal spells like Into the Roil where half the value is being able to interact and react to my opponents plays, and forcing me to cast them mainphase removes a significant amount of utility from those cards that I don't think is recouped from being able to cast 2 of them. The kicker on the card is also ludicrously expensive and I have to imagine I have better things to do with my mana than cast Wilt 3 times for 9 mana. I could definitely include some more cards to help make the card better, like Ponder and Nature's Lore and friends, Crop Rotation, maybe even Life's Legacy or Nostalgic Dreams, but the rest of the deck isn't built to abuse these cards and fitting in 5+ cards just to support one card that I currently can't even tutor for seems silly.
Gnarlid Colony - Copying this with my general makes 8/8 worth of trampling creatures across 2 bodies for 5 mana which isn't awful (technically 6/6 since I had to remove 2 counters to copy it, but ...) and they put counters on themselves which interacts with a lot of my cards, but that mode isn't really what interests me. Just being a 2/2 that gives my general trample, when my general can easily reach triple digits of stats with all the counter doubling my deck can do, gives the card enough utility alongside its kicker mode for me to seriously consider it. I ultimately decided that Evolution Charm had more utility and swapped it in over this card, with flying being arguably a less reliable form of evasion considering how large I can make Verazol, but Gnarlid Colony is definitely a card on my shortlist for inclusion. Though maybe I'm crazy and Key to the City is really what I'm looking for.
Roost of Drakes - My opinion of this card can be summed up as follows: If I kick Roost of Drakes and copy it with Verazol, the Split Current, and every turn or other turn or so I'm casting a kicked spell that generates me an Air Elemental worth of stats, then the card is quite good and is worth the cost. If I am unable to copy it with Verazol and only get 1 drake every turn or every other turn, than the card is slow and inefficient and isn't worth the cost. I think the latter situation is going to be happening enough times that I'd rather not play the card, but I'm willing to give it a try if my deck functions differently than how I expect it to.
Sea Gate Stormcaller - My deck currently has 8 spells that this card can copy (not including cards that are worthless to copy like Heroic Intervention). 2/8 of those, cards like Regrowth, are excellent and definitely worth copying one or more times. Another 2/8 of those, cards like Reclaim the Wastes, are incredibly disappointing to copy and aren't really worth the mana I'm spending. The other 4 are all instant-speed removal spells like Into the Roil where half the value is being able to interact and react to my opponents plays, and forcing me to cast them mainphase removes a significant amount of utility from those cards that I don't think is recouped from being able to cast 2 of them. The kicker on the card is also ludicrously expensive and I have to imagine I have better things to do with my mana than cast Wilt 3 times for 9 mana. I could definitely include some more cards to help make the card better, like Ponder and Nature's Lore and friends, Crop Rotation, maybe even Life's Legacy or Nostalgic Dreams, but the rest of the deck isn't built to abuse these cards and fitting in 5+ cards just to support one card that I currently can't even tutor for seems silly.
Gnarlid Colony - Copying this with my general makes 8/8 worth of trampling creatures across 2 bodies for 5 mana which isn't awful (technically 6/6 since I had to remove 2 counters to copy it, but ...) and they put counters on themselves which interacts with a lot of my cards, but that mode isn't really what interests me. Just being a 2/2 that gives my general trample, when my general can easily reach triple digits of stats with all the counter doubling my deck can do, gives the card enough utility alongside its kicker mode for me to seriously consider it. I ultimately decided that Evolution Charm had more utility and swapped it in over this card, with flying being arguably a less reliable form of evasion considering how large I can make Verazol, but Gnarlid Colony is definitely a card on my shortlist for inclusion. Though maybe I'm crazy and Key to the City is really what I'm looking for.
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Hydroid Krasis - With my general and all my kicker spells being huge mana-sinks, I don't have much room for more, but a giant flampling source of card draw and lifegain that is also playing with +1/+1 counters is definitely something I'd consider. I don't own one currently and I'm not sure I'd play it even if I did, but once the price goes down when it rotates (hopefully) I'll consider picking up a copy and giving it a testrun.
Branching Evolution - The last cut I made for the deck was swapping this card out for Twinning Staff once I realized how pricey this thing still is. Should 100% be in the deck, but I'd rather not drop 30$ on a card that's likely only going to end up in a few niche decks. Maybe one day Jumpstart will be widely available.
Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn/Turntimber Symbiosis // Turntimber, Serpentine Wood - I can definitely afford to run a few more nonbasics, especially ones that can ETB untapped, and both of these cards offer something my deck is interested in, but I'd rather not drop 10$+ on additional copies of these when I have other decks that want these more.
Lithoform Engine - I can use all modes of this card extremely well, but I'm worried that it's too much of a win-more-ish mana sink to justify inclusion. If the card remains as expensive as it is, then it might not matter, but I'm very much on the fence about whether this does enough for the mana I'm spending.
Branching Evolution - The last cut I made for the deck was swapping this card out for Twinning Staff once I realized how pricey this thing still is. Should 100% be in the deck, but I'd rather not drop 30$ on a card that's likely only going to end up in a few niche decks. Maybe one day Jumpstart will be widely available.
Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn/Turntimber Symbiosis // Turntimber, Serpentine Wood - I can definitely afford to run a few more nonbasics, especially ones that can ETB untapped, and both of these cards offer something my deck is interested in, but I'd rather not drop 10$+ on additional copies of these when I have other decks that want these more.
Lithoform Engine - I can use all modes of this card extremely well, but I'm worried that it's too much of a win-more-ish mana sink to justify inclusion. If the card remains as expensive as it is, then it might not matter, but I'm very much on the fence about whether this does enough for the mana I'm spending.
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2020/9/11
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Early Swaps
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2020/9/12
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Early Swaps 2.0
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2020/9/15
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Goldfish Fixes
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