Exponential Potential: Quandrix, the Proof Deck Tech

Simic is a popular color combination in Commander, and for good reason. But it's not known for powerful sorceries and instants. On the shortlist of best Simic commanders are landfall legends like Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Merfolk menaces like Hakbal of the Surging Soul, and mana maniacs like Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. Translating that into deckbuilding trends, Simic traditionally lends itself to themes of landfall, lots of creatures, and lots of mana.

Quandrix, the Proof presents an interesting deckbuilding challenge, and I've come up with a unique solution on a slim $100 budget.

Show Your Work

Quandrix, the Proof aces the vanilla creature test with flying (and trampling) colors, but that's not the most interesting part of her. She has cascade, starting off her value engine strong, but most importantly grants cascade to all instants and sorceries you cast from your hand.

With those two value-additive abilities in mind, here's this deck's basic gameplan:

• Ramp on early turns
• Cast Quandrix as soon as possible
• Cast as many instants and sorceries as possible on following turns
• Protect our life total as we get close to a winning position

Let's cover these steps and flesh out just how we plan to win the game with this incredible value engine on the battlefield.

Explosive Growth

In this deck, you rely almost entirely on instant and sorcery-based land ramp to trigger the commander's cascade ability as frequently as possible. There are some landfall payoffs covered later as well.

Some of the unique options for ramping available to Simic are spells that combine card draw and playing lands. Growth Spiral, the cheapest version, draws you a card and lets you play a land at instant speed. Planar Genesis can ramp you too, but also gives you the option of finding a relevant spell in the top four cards of your library instead. Lessons from Life is a newer card that is unmatched in mana efficiency: draw three cards and play an additional land for just four mana.

Besides giving you a spin at the wheel of value, casting these spells once the commander is out gives you even more mana for the next turn, so you can cast even more cascading spells, or re-cast the commander if she gets removed.

Inevitable Entropy

There are two tracks that this deck can take to victory: honest beatdowns, and slowly proliferating poison counters on your opponents turn after turn.

While there are only seven sources of poison counters in the decklist, you only need to put one counter on each opponent and let the 14 sources of proliferate — several of which are repeatable — help you finish counting to 10. Infectious Bite and Prologue to Phyresis make this process even easier, because with one spell you can give each opponent a poison counter, and each instance of proliferation after that can grow all of them. Viral Drake is a flying source of infect and an outlet for all your mana late-game to keep the poison spreading.

Proliferation doesn't just help your poison strategy. This deck has lots of creatures that enter with +1/+1 counters, or create Fractal tokens that enter with +1/+1 counters. Evolution Sage and Flux Channeler both reward you with proliferation for doing what you already plan to do: play lands and cast noncreature spells. Dreamtide Whale is an immensely large threat, or defender, for just three mana. Its time counters can be consistently refreshed whenever any player casts their second spell in a turn. Even without outside help, the whale will usually stay on the battlefield indefinitely with its own proliferation triggers.

Advanced Arithmetic

Counting to 120 damage is a more daunting task than counting to 10 poison counters, but it's a solid Plan B for this deck.

Paradox Zone gives us one Fractal token a turn, but the growth is exponential; it enters with a growth counter on it, then at the beginning of each of your end steps, it doubles the number of paradox counters on it and then creates a 0/0 Fractal token with a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to its growth counters. With a little proliferation, the Fractal expansion will get out of hand in a few turns.

Mightform Harmonizer is a powerful landfall card that can quickly turn your commander into a one-shot machine just by triggering its landfall ability twice during your turn, with help from a ramp spell like Rampant Growth or Nature's Lore.

Managorger Hydra will grow extra fast with your cascade triggers and proliferation spells. In one or two turn cycles, if it hasn't been removed, it will be a massive, trampling threat.

Controlling the Variables

The way we deal with threats in this deck is unique. Besides the classic mana-efficient removal spells Pongify and Rapid Hybridization, we run a lot of spells that put stun counters onto creatures. This helps us lock down specific threats on the battlefield indefinitely as we draw into ways to proliferate the stun counters and keep them sound asleep.

Freeze in Place locks one target down for three turn cycles — an eternity in Commander — and gives you a scry to set up your next cascade spell. Crashing Wave has the option to tap a lot of enemy creatures at once for extra mana, but if you cascade into it, you can still distribute three stun counters on already-tapped creatures your opponents control. Lulu, Stern Guardian is an incredibly strong deterrent for possible attackers, and just like Viral Drake, has an activated proliferation ability, providing an easy outlet for all the mana you accrue in the late game. Despite her primarily defensive role, Lulu can help advance the late-game poison plan to its terminal stage.

Choose which creatures you put stun counters on carefully. Consider which player is most likely to see you as a threat, or which threat of theirs is most difficult for you to block, such as a flier or a large trampler, or their commander if their deck relies on attack triggers like Arabella, Abandoned Doll.

Keep in mind that proliferate doesn't require targeting, so even if an opponent puts Lightning Greaves on their commander on a later turn, if that commander has a stun counter on it you can keep proliferating it.

Solve for Zero

These are risky cascade deck staples. Ancestral Visions is Ancestral Recall without a mana cost, meaning you can't cast it from your hand, but you can cast it if you cascade into it. Inevitable Betrayal is a zero mana version of the powerful spell Bribery that steals a creature from an opponent's deck and puts it onto the battlefield under your control. Grab someone's Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and watch their go-wide army suddenly go away.

These are guaranteed hits from casting a one-mana instant or sorcery with Quandrix in play. This deck has three: Serum Visions, Pongify, and Rapid Hybridization.

Big Fives

These are the five-mana spells you hope to hit the first time you play your commander.

With Inexorable Tide in play, every spell you cast advances the poison counter gameplan, or buffs your board of Fractal tokens and other creatures bearing +1/+1 counters.

Deekah, Fractal Theorist turns every instant and sorcery into a Fractal token with equivalent power and toughness in the form of +1/+1 counters. She won't have a big effect on the turn you cast her, but the follow-up turn could be explosive.

Railway Brawler starts your commander out as a 12/12 instead of a 6/6 flying trampler. Additionally, any creature you control enters the battlefield with +1/+1 counters on it equal to its power. This works with Fractal tokens too, because they enter the battlefield with their +1/+1 counters already on them.

Bribery, as mentioned earlier, is a sorcery spell that steals a creature from an opponents deck and puts it straight into play. Why clone the best creature they have in play if you can take the best creature out of their entire deck instead?

Archmage of Runes adds a card draw to every instant or sorcery spell you cast, and you'll be casting a lot. He also gives you a discount on casting instants and sorceries, letting you cast more of them each turn.

Running its Course

When poison counters are piling up on your opponents, and you're a constant source of proliferation, you will be identified as the single most important threat on the table. There are two solutions to this: end the game quickly, or stay alive long enough to let the poison work its magic.

Expansion Algorithm is an unfortunate card to cascade into, but if you draw it instead, it's the simplest way to win the game on the spot once all of your opponents have poison counters. With the amount of ramp this deck has, casting Expansion Algorithm for X=9 will be easy by turn eight, and without a counterspell, that will be lights out for the table.

Going in the other direction and prolonging the process, Sunstone plus all of the snow basics helps you recur a fog effect for each combat that you can't effectively defend against. It costs a land each time, but you should have plenty of those in the late game.

Upgrades

Constant Mists is a pricier version of Sunstone that also triggers Quandrix's cascade trigger each time you cast it, but you will quickly run out of one and zero-drop spells to cascade into.

Protecting your commander between your turns is important. Tamiyo's Safekeeping is a mana-efficient way to protect your commander, and when her cascade trigger goes off when you cast it, you're guaranteed to hit one of your zero-cost spells.

Ouroboroid turns any board with creatures on it into a threat that needs to be answered. There's some synergy with a timely proliferate onto Ouroboroid, but this card is great in just about every green-inclusive deck that wants to use creatures to deal damage, which is nearly all of them.

Mossborn Hydra is currently being a menace in Standard, but it's no less of a menace in the right Commander deck. This deck has tons of lands entering play and proliferation, so each doubling of counters is even more effective. Also consider Scythecat Cub if you want to swerve into landfall and beatdown over poison.

Sidegrades

Archmage Emertius can substitute for Archmage of Runes and gives you at least part of the Giant's text box for a cheaper price.

Embrace the Paradox has you draw three cards and put an extra land into play tapped. It's a five-drop that your commander's cascade trigger can find and cast for free. If you draw it normally, it does the exact same thing as Lessons from Life but costs an additional mana, with the slight advantage of being an instant rather than a sorcery.

The rest of the deck's core are all pretty cheap pick-ups. The 27 snow lands might get a little bit costly, but most playgroups are fine with you specifying beforehand that your basics are all actually snow basics. I'm sure they won't suspect anything fishy.

If you do decide to run regular basics, be sure to swap out Sunstone for another form of protection or removal — preferably something repeatable — and consider swapping Ice-Fang Coatl if losing deathtouch is a deal-breaker for you.

Theory to Practice

Below is the decklist for this poison-centric build of Quandrix, the Proof:

View the decklist on EDHLAB and add it to your favorites to try it out in multiplayer, or try it solo in our full-table Playtester.

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