Pir and Toothy's Simic Adventure

Commander / EDH Casual Counters GU (Simic) Ramp

beardumbra

Creature (26)

• 1x Chasm Skulker
• 1x Deepglow Skate
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fathom Mage
• 1x Generous Patron
• 1x Gyre Sage
• 1x Hangarback Walker
• 1x Incubation Druid
• 1x Ironshell Beetle
• 1x Joraga Treespeaker
• 1x Magus of the Bazaar
• 1x Master Biomancer
• 1x Mystic Snake
• 1x Phantasmal Image
• 1x Plaxcaster Frogling
• 1x Prime Speaker Zegana
• 1x Ravenous Slime
• 1x Scavenging Ooze
• 1x Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1x Thrummingbird
• 1x Trinket Mage
• 1x Trygon Predator
• 1x Veteran Explorer
• 1x Vorel of the Hull Clade
• 1x Walking Ballista
• 1x Zegana, Utopian Speaker

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Explore
• 1x Increasing Savagery
• 1x Part the Waterveil
• 1x Pir's Whim
• 1x Repudiate / Replicate
• 1x Tezzeret's Gambit
• 1x Windfall

Land (37)

• 1x Alchemist's Refuge
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Botanical Sanctum
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Flooded Grove
• 11x Forest
• 1x Forge of Heroes
• 1x Hinterland Harbor
• 8x Island
• 1x Llanowar Reborn
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Opal Palace
• 1x Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Seat of the Synod
• 1x Temple of Mystery
• 1x Tree of Tales
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

Instant (9)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Fumble
• 1x Growth Spiral
• 1x Incubation / Incongruity
• 1x Inspiring Call
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Mystic Confluence
• 1x Negate

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Burgeoning
• 1x Doubling Season
• 1x Exploration
• 1x Hadana's Climb  ^Flip
• 1x Hardened Scales
• 1x Simic Ascendancy

Commanders (2)

Artifact (8)

• 1x Astral Cornucopia
• 1x Contagion Engine
• 1x Everflowing Chalice
• 1x Power Conduit
• 1x Simic Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of War and Peace
• 1x Throne of Geth

Planeswalker (5)

• 1x Garruk, Primal Hunter
• 1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1x Karn Liberated
• 1x Kiora, the Crashing Wave
• 1x Nissa, Voice of Zendikar

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Maybeboard

Creature (7)

• 1x Altered Ego
• 1x Looter il-Kor
• 1x Profaner of the Dead
• 1x Seedborn Muse
• 1x Silumgar Sorcerer
• 1x Spike Weaver
• 1x Trollbred Guardian

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Seasons Past

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Archmage Ascension
• 1x As Foretold
• 1x Khalni Heart Expedition
• 1x Song of Freyalise

Land (3)

• 1x Command Beacon
• 1x Lumbering Falls
• 1x Miren, the Moaning Well

Artifact (4)

• 1x Elixir of Immortality
• 1x Loxodon Warhammer
• 1x Lux Cannon
• 1x Thought Vessel

Instant (2)

• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Heroic Intervention

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Pir, Imaginative Rascal and Toothy, Imaginary Friend are a unique partnership of "counters matter" commanders. Pir is the best counter enhancer since Doubling Season , as he can affect all types of counters for any type of action that places them on your permanents, while Toothy is an excellent threat and draw engine. The Simic combine with the partners with +1/+1 counter themes, and supplemented with cards that generate counters, draw cards, and interact with your opponents, they make a fun team altogether.

Pir

Pir, Imaginative Rascal is an obviously exciting card. He has an ability that compares nicely to many powerful cards in casual Magic history.

If one or more counters would be put on a permanent your team controls, that many plus one of each of those kinds of counters are put on that permanent instead.

Any counters that go on you or your teammates' permanents are incremented, which can augment those effects in sometimes extreme ways. The kinds of counters that this is good with has been listed elsewhere, but in this deck the primary focus is on +1/+1 counters. Pir's primary role will be to boost his imaginary friend, as well as our other creatures' +1/+1 counters and planeswalkers' loyalty counters, while secondarily he provides an extra place to stack +1/+1 counters and sometimes will affect other kinds of counters, and perhaps help your teammates too, if that is the variant of commander being played. Because of the high potential for synergy, Pir influences many flavors of our deckbuilding choices. All in all, Pir would be an interesting fringe commander on his own.

Toothy

Toothy, Imaginary Friend is the real centerpiece of this build. We are going to leverage all three of its abilities (its partnership with Pir, its trigger for drawing a card, and trigger for leaving the battlefield) to advance our counter-centric gameplan. Pir has already been discussed, so here the second and third of the three abilities will be covered.

"Whenever you draw a card, put a +1/+1 counter on Toothy, Imaginary Friend." Each card we draw creates a separate instance of Toothy's first (non-"Partner With") trigger, which, when Toothy is on its own, each card drawn places one counter on Toothy. (If it were worded "draw one or more cards, put a" or "put that many", it would be a different card.) With Pir, each card drawn instead places two counters on Toothy. This means that as long as we are drawing cards, Toothy can get bigger, and since drawing cards is already a good thing to be doing in itself, we are happy to help Toothy grow threatening and even lethal while setting up our hand over time.

"When Toothy leaves the battlefield, draw a card for each +1/+1 counter on it." When first spoiled, this card was viewed as the next evolution of cards like Chasm Skulker or Hangarback Walker , but two aspects of the third ability shift the paradigm entirely. First, Toothy cares not about what way it leaves the battlefield, so whether it is destroyed, exiled, bounced, tucked, or otherwise put back in the command zone, we'll be compensated with the effect. Second, that effect is drawing a card for each +1/+1 counter on the card. People familiar with Prime Speaker Zegana and similar cards know that turning creature stats into card draw has high potential; this card offers that deal for +1/+1 counters, some of which come from the trigger caused by card draw, others which are added by Pir, and yet more can come from other cards in our deck. We're rather sad when Toothy draws three or fewer cards with this ability, but many times this ability will draw seven or more or many more cards and we're totally fine with the "threat" having been "dealt with."

When considered as a complete package, Toothy can be thought of as reading "Whenever you draw a card (or place a +1/+1 counter on Toothy), draw another card later." In other words, while Toothy is in play, it turns all our card draws and its +1/+1 counters into additional card draws. In combination with Pir, this effect is magnified. This is the central idea to this deck.

Patterns of Play

Coming soon

Playing Against This Deck

With Toothy being our primary engine of the deck, fighting against it directly will be the first axis along which our opponents will react. A big Toothy is a game-ending threat in itself and often the single most important permanent in play, but our opponents will reward us if they remove it through conventional means as well. Thus, there are two main lines for dealing with Toothy we must really worry about.

Removing Toothy Early. When Toothy is removed early, whether by counterspell, spot removal, or board wipe, the deck still has backup plans, including enough resources to set up a more expensive Toothy later, but is likely set back enough to be forced to worry about other decks starting to enact their plans. In order to mitigate the risk of an early Toothy removal, the deck has ways to draw cards or otherwise place counters on Toothy the turn it comes out, or instants to protect a small Toothy.

Neutralizing Toothy's Leaves-the-Battlefield Trigger. There is a range of specific effects that can cause a big Toothy not to draw the cards promised by its third ability. Some are more common in typical EDH decks than others, but any effect in this category is worth holding an instant to fight over, especially if it means we are retaining access to our Draw 7+ effect.

• Another player gains control of Toothy, e.g. Act of Treason , Control Magic , Expropriate and others
• Toothy loses its abilities, e.g. Song of the Dryads , Humility , Sudden Spoiling and others
• Toothy's triggered ability is countered directly, e.g. Disallow , Stifle and others
• The +1/+1 counters are removed from Toothy, e.g. Vampire Hexmage , Black Sun's Zenith , AEther Snap and others
• An effect prohibits or otherwise punishes the card draw, e.g. Notion Thief , Spirit of the Labyrinth , Nekusar, the Mindrazer and others
• We run out of cards to draw and lose

Beyond these avenues of specifically dealing with Toothy, Simic is generally weak to aggressive, creature-centric gameplans, and also weak to effects that neuter the extra lands and extra cards formula that tends to win out long games of EDH, such as mass land destruction, mass discard, and other forms of card draw punishment. Lastly, counter-specific hate such as Solemnity is obviously a huge hose for these partners in particular.

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Counters 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH GU (Simic) 5 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Ramp 5 years ago
Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.90
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Copy Clone, Emblem Kiora, the Crashing Wave, Frog Lizard 3/3 G, Kraken 9/9 U, Plant 0/1 G, Squid 1/1 U, Thopter 1/1 C, Wurm 6/6 G
Folders	CMDR: Current Decks, Decks that I like very much, Simic, Battle buds