"Simic Ascendancy: A whole lot of work"

"Simic Ascendancy: A whole lot of work"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

When I started playing with the Simic Combine one of the things that I instantly noticed was the amount of work that came with their mechanics. Graft and Evolve makes you look at the counters that you could put on a creature and that means a lot of +1/+1 counters when something comes into play or dies.

Like I said. A lot of work. Short of attacking however I did not see much use for the +1/+1 counters that keep sprouting up in the Simic colors. Just for one I would like to win without attacking with these things. And so an answer was provided for me in the form of Simic Ascendancy.

Costing just 2 mana of the Simic colors this enchantment is a win condition and a whole lot of work for you as well. So first you can pay 3 mana to put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control(there it is again. Counters!). So when you put one of these counters on a creature you also need to put that same amount of Growth Counters on Simic Ascendancy(Even more work!).

And the win condition is that if at the beginning of your upkeep Simic Ascendancy has 20 or more counters on it then you win the game. Just like that. It is not really easy since this enchantment can be wiped clean by any disenchant effects that your opponents would happen to be packing.

This card would fit will as an alternate win condition to a lot of proliferate decks or even those that feature unlimited mana in the simic combination of colors. A Deadeye Navigator and Peregrine Drake unli mana combination can do the trick.

This also fits well with the Evolve mechanic since there are always counters to be added. One of the things I would love to do(although it would be tiring) is to have Prime Speaker Zegana come into play when I have something like Krosan Cloudscraper in play so I can draw tons of cards and put a lot of Growth Counters on this enchantment. Maybe I can bounce Zegana with a Soul Bounded Deadeye and have it enter again to draw more and make sure that I have enough counters to win the next turn....or should I even wait for my next turn. This is Simic after all and it has blue in it. And Blue has extra turns in it. Hmmmmmm

Like I said. A lot of work but well worth it.