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Simic (green/blue) decks are one of the many color combinations playable in Magic: The Gathering's Commander format. Common themes for Simic include Ramp, Pod, and +1/+1 Counters. Many Simic commanders often build card advantage while the rest of the cards help advance your plays to form formidable board states.

RELATED: Magic: The Gathering – Azorius Commander Staples Guide

Every card since the first set is legal in Commander (sans banned cards), so many powerful staples belong in any Simic deck. These cards provide much utility to answer problem cards, ramp the number of lands you control, and keep your creatures safe.

Ramp

MTG Growth Spiral card and art background

One-half of Simic's central identity is primarily based on ramp and has many cards available to help you quickly get a ton of lands onto the battlefield. Ramp spells are vital in Commander to ensure you can always cast your spells, as waiting around for a full turn cycle in a four-player game with nothing is never a good thing.

Ramp is not exclusive to just spells that put lands onto the battlefield but includes mana rocks as well. These are artifacts that can tap to add mana, usually the colors your deck is playing (in this case, blue and/or green). Although, as with every Commander deck, mana rocks like Sol Ring and Arcane Signet are usually must-includes.

Card Name

Reasoning

Growth Spiral

Unlike most ramp spells, this is an instant, so it can be cast during the opponent's end phase once you don't need to keep mana up for counterspells and interaction.


Even if you do not have a land in hand, sometimes the card draw is worth casting, and if you draw a land, you still get to put it onto the battlefield.

Rampant Growth

Rampant Growth puts a basic land from your library directly onto the battlefield. It only costs two mana, allowing you to get ahead of your mana curve early.


This early fixing is important in dual-color decks to ensure you always have access to both colors.

Cultivate/Kodama's Reach

Both these cards are mostly functionally the same (the only difference is Kodama's Reach is an Arcane spell). These get two basic lands out from your deck, with one going onto the battlefield tapped and the other going to your hand. These cards are a great way to ensure you don't miss your land drops and triggering landfall abilities.

Nature's Lore/Three Visits

Nature's Lore and Three Visit both let you put any Forest onto the battlefield directly from your deck. Unlike many ramp spells, the land from these enters untapped. This allows you to utilize the land immediately. It searches for any Forest, not just a basic - so this will enable you to get a dual land like Breeding Pool to ensure you have access to both your colors immediately.

Simic Signet

Simic Signet is a mana rock that trades any generic mana for one green and one blue mana. This means you get two mana for the price of one.

Talisman Of Curiosity

This card gives you constant access to one colorless mana. Alternatively, you can pay one life to tap for either a green or blue mana. Since many Simic spells are reactive or have higher mana costs, this extra mana makes it much easier to ensure you can cast your spells.

Card Draw

Rhystic Study

The other half of Simic's identity is card draw. The color pairing comes with plenty of ways to draw cards with ease. Card draw often comes with cheap spells that can draw multiple cards a turn.

These range from enchantments that force the opponent to spend mana to prevent the draw to spells that will draw you cards directly without relying on others.

Card Name

Reasoning

Rhystic Study

Rhystic Study is a card that often draws a ton of cards. You get a card whenever any spell is cast unless the opponent spends a mana.


This pseudo-tax effect has no downside and makes your opponents feel like they need to spend extra on each spell to keep you from drawing fresh hands.

Mystic Remora

Mystic Remora only costs one blue mana (though you have to pay one mana per each turn it's been on the battlefield). This turns your opponents' noncreature spells into card draw, as most will not have the excess mana to pay four mana to stop this effect. Although it has cumulative upkeep, you ramp enough in Simic to almost always be able to pay for it.

Pull From Tomorrow

This card allows you to draw as many cards as you have mana to spend. It draws X cards where X is how much mana paid (plus two blue mana). Pull From Tomorrow is an instant spell allowing you to spend all your unspent mana during an end step to draw many cards. Since you can ramp so quickly in Simic, you can often draw a hefty amount of cards off of it.

Shamanic Revelation

This card will draw you a card for each creature you control. Simic has plenty of low-mana creatures, including mana dorks, to make casting Shamanic Revelation easier.


Although it's a five-mana sorcery, the amount of cards you can draw is worth the price.

Removal

MTG Beast Within card and art background

Removal is important to play in every Commander deck. There are many cards that can stop your deck from functioning, so having ways to deal with them is incredibly important.

Simic colors shine at getting rid of artifacts and enchantments but do struggle with creature removal in most cases outside of fight spells and Auras like Witness Protection.

Card Name

Reasoning

Beast Within

Beast Within is Simic's way of dealing with any permanent. It does leave the opponent with a 3/3 creature, but this tradeoff is worth it to eliminate one of their win conditions or problem cards.

Pongify/Rapid Hybridization

These are some of the only direct creature removals in blue which destroy a creature and replace it with a 3/3 token. They only cost one mana, making them very cost-efficient.

Nature's Claim

For just one green mana, Nature's Claim takes care of any artifact or enchantment on the battlefield. While its controller does gain four life, this hardly matters in the grand scheme of things.

Krosan Grip

Krosan Grip destroys any artifact or enchantment and shines with its split second ability. This prevents anyone from casting spells or using non-mana abilities so long as it's on the stack. This prevents Krosan Grip from being countered to ensure you successfully remove your target.

RELATED: Magic: The Gathering – Mono-Blue Commander Staples Guide

Board Wipes

MTG: Cyclonic Rift card

Board Wipes in Simic almost never actually destroy creatures. Instead, they tend to either bounce them back to the hand or exile them and replace them with a different creature(s). The lack of board wipes is one of Simic's biggest weaknesses, but the board wipes that Simic does have are solid.

The benefit of Simic's board wipes is that many of them only affect your opponents so that you can keep your side of the battlefield intact. Unfortunately, some of the stronger cards only affect one player, like Aetherspouts and Aetherize, but there are still solid cards that can affect the entire game.

Card Name

Reasoning

Cyclonic Rift

An iconic blue board wipe, Cyclonic Rift drastically sets everyone back except you when it's cast. It's a giant reset button for the game as it returns all nonland permanents to the hands, not just creatures (except yours).


A late-game Cyclonic Rift often forces opponents to have to discard many of the permanents that were returned, as they won't have enough mana to cast them again.

Ezuri's Predation

Ezuri's Predation doesn't directly deal with every creature but does create a 4/4 for each creature your opponents control, and then they fight each other. This will ensure any creature with four or less toughness is destroyed in combat (baring protection), although the tokens you create can have their stats boosted by other means.

Oversimplify

Oversimplify is one of Simic's only ways to deal with all creatures directly. It will exile all creatures on the battlefield and create a Fractal token with +1/+1 counters for each player equal to the number of creatures they had to exile on their battlefield.


These tokens can be destroyed with something as simple as a bounce spell, making out-of-control board states much easier to deal with.

Whelming Wave

This card is a mass-bounce spell (unless your opponents have Krakens, Leviathans, Octopuses, or Serpents on the battlefield). It will return all creatures back to the hand that isn't of those creature types.


If you're playing a deck that utilizes those creatures, this can become a one-sided mass-bounce.

Evacuation

Unlike Whelming Wave, Evacuation guarantees all creatures are returned to the hand.


It is also an instant spell, so it can be used as disruption on an opponent's turn and let you be the first to rebuild your board state.

Interaction

Heroic Intervention

Every Commander deck needs reactive cards. These are cards that can respond to what you're opponent is casting. These consist of counterspells to stop a key spell from resolving, along with ways to protect your creatures from removal and board wipes.

Simic has plenty of these cards, with green having some of the best protection spells and blue being the color of counterspells.

Card Name

Reasoning

Heroic Intervention

This is one of the best ways to keep all your permanents safe. Heroic Intervention gives all your permanents hexproof and indestructible, making removing them almost impossible outside of exiling board wipes or forcing you to sacrifice them.

Counterspell

Counterspell is an unconditional counterspell for just two blue mana. It's easy to cast and has no restriction or requirement to cast it, so you can always respond to an opponent's spell.

Fierce Guardianship

Fierce Guardianship is a free counterspell so long as you control your commander. This negates any noncreature spell and can catch the opponent off guard when you're tapped out.

Simic Charm

This card gives you the option of three different effects. One is to provide a +3/+3 stat boost to a creature which isn't amazing, but the other two effects are. One can give all your permanents hexproof, keeping them safe from any kind of targeted removal. The last returns a creature to its owner's hand, which can interrupt a combo or set the opponent back on mana.

Next: Strongest Enchantment Commanders In Magic: The Gathering