Counter Intelligence Upgrade Guide: 16 Easy Changes You Can Make

Uthros Research Craft | Illustration by Piotr Dura

I genuinely love Commander precons, even though they aren’t always the best decks. In fact, they’re often sub-par. But I can’t resist the urge to tinker around with them, to reverse engineer what makes a good Commander deck by understanding where precons go wrong. Upgrading them is a ton of fun, too.

So today, I’m here to help you break down Edge of Eternities’ Counter Intelligence precon to help you understand its strengths and its failings, and to suggest a couple of cards that help you to construct a more efficient deck.

Counter Intelligence Deck Overview

Kilo, Apogee Mind | Illustration by Tuan Duong Chu

As the name suggests, the Jeskai () Counter Intelligence deck cares about counters, specifically +1/+1 counters and charge counters, both of which are provided by the face commander, Inspirit, Flagship Vessel.

The deck wants to gain long-term advantages from cards like Insight Engine and Empowered Autogenerator that scale rapidly with counters from the commander plus a slew of proliferate support. The deck even has cards like Darksteel Reactor and Lux Artillery to convert those counters into an eventual win.

There’s also a notable token subtheme, fueled by cards like Titan Forge and Golem Foundry that transmute charge counters into cold, hard bodies. Which is… a lot of themes; a common flaw to find in precons.

But it isn’t all bad. There’s a reasonable curve, good card draw, and an alright removal suite. The land base sucks, but I’ve given up on precons ever doing something good there. With these flaws in mind, I want to improve the deck by making it more concise, by homing in on specific themes, and cutting the chaff to give it a clearer path to victory.

Upgrade Plan

This guide’s goal isn't to make Counter Intelligence a more powerful, formidable deck, but to enhance themes already present in the box. While I want to make it stronger, I’m not adding any wild combos or anything that would catapult us to Bracket 4 (though, if you were so inclined, Magistrate's Scepter goes infinite with this commander and a single proliferate trigger). These swaps keep the deck in Bracket 2 while they make the deck more concise and more consistent for a better gameplay experience.

Firstly, let’s trim ambitious cards like Darksteel Reactor to focus on the themes of generating tokens and using counters to buff them. That gives you a much clearer win condition. About half of the upgrades either generate tokens or help you to turn tokens into a win.

To make the deck more consistent means to add more generally useful cards. The deck could use better ramp, and it’s lacking in a few key areas like repeatable removal and protection spells. These cards are the other half of the upgrades, and they make the gameplay experience just a little smoother.

Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon

Suggested Cut: Darksteel Reactor

Darksteel Reactor probably won’t win you the game. In fact, I bet it causes you to lose games because you spend 4 mana to do nothing but show your opponents how many turns they have to kill you before you win the game. The deck also lacks the tools for a long game to reap the rewards.

Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon is a more natural fit. It has a meaningful synergy with your commander and other counter support, and it even makes artifact tokens for the sake of cards like Alibou, Ancient Witness.

Cosmogrand Zenith

Suggested Cut: Chrome Host Seedshark

I don’t hate Chrome Host Seedshark; in fact, there’s probably a version of Inspirit, Flagship Vessel where it excels. But paying mana to flip the Incubator tokens is too slow for what this deck wants.

Cosmogrand Zenith provides more bodies with more immediate impact. The modality of its triggered ability makes up for a lack of artifact synergies by providing access to team-wide counters.

Cayth, Famed Mechanist

Suggested Cut: Deepglow Skate

Deepglow Skate makes sense with Darksteel Reactor and Lux Artillery, but I’m not going down that route.

Cayth, Famed Mechanist is a perfect inclusion that synergizes with both tokens and counters. It’s kind of surprising they didn’t put it in the deck to begin with.

Warleader’s Call

Suggested Cut: Lux Artillery

Lux Artillery does more than Darksteel Reactor thanks to its sunburst ability, but I’m not convinced you want to wait until you have 30 counters to start reaping the full benefits of the card.

While Warleader's Call offers a generally lower buff, it helps your tokens instead of just the creatures you cast, and I have no doubt that the damage you get for playing creatures and creating tokens rivals Lux Artillery’s once all is said and done.

Mikaeus, the Luminarch

Suggested Cut: Gavel of the Righteous

Mikaeus, the Lunarch simply does what Gavel of the Righteous wants to, but better. The Gavel turns Inspirit’s counters into power, but Mikaeus does that while it spreads power across the entire board instead of just one creature.

Molten Gatekeeper

Suggested Cut: Moxite Refinery

Moxite Refinery is a pretty cool card that does a ton in decks with counter doublers; you can remove two counters from a permanent and put four on another, and so on. But I’m not doing that.

Molten Gatekeeper isn’t the fanciest tool in the shed, but it provides valuable burn to finish your opponents, and it’s an artifact, so it has some synergy.

Filigree Vector

Suggested Cut: Resourceful Defense

Resourceful Defense is another casualty of my choice to remove Darksteel Reactor and similar cards that demand exorbitant amounts of charge counters; it’s also just relatively unimpressive. I’d much rather have Filigree Vector to give everything a counter plus supply late-game proliferation.

Orochi Hatchery

Suggested Cut: Phyrexian Metamorph

I won’t try to convince you that Phyrexian Metamorph is a bad card, because I’m not a liar. But you can do a little better than a general value piece, which leads me to Orochi Hatchery: a card I have to assume is on the Reserved List due to its exclusion from the original deck. It’s a perfect fit: It’s an artifact you’re happy to play on turn 2 prior to your commander, one that feeds off both proliferation and token synergies and provides a mana sink for the late game.

Transmogrifying Wand

Suggested Cut: Experimental Augury

Counter Intelligence doesn’t struggle with card draw or proliferation, so Experimental Augury felt like a natural cut for something more interesting.

Transmogrifying Wand provides a repeatable Pongify effect, which gives you time to extract value from some of your slower cards.

Hopeful Initiate

Suggested Cut: Angel of the Ruins

Angel of the Ruins is a frequent 101st card in my decks, something that looks appealing yet always ends up being just a hair too slow or awkward. But artifact and enchantment hate matters, so Hopeful Initiate deserves this slot.

It turns an Inspirit trigger into Naturalize, and it handles more than two artifacts and enchantments. It’s even comparable to the price of the angel, as it costs 7 mana to play this and remove two permanents. Destroying is worse than exiling, but this is a faster, more flexible card.

Walking Ballista

Suggested Cut: Pull from Tomorrow

I don’t have a clever comparison between these two cards. You have enough card draw that Pull from Tomorrow isn’t necessary, especially because I’ve added additional mana sinks, and the deck has so much proliferation and counter generation that it desperately needs Walking Ballista as a source board control and burn.

Talisman of Conviction

Suggested Cut: Cloud Key

Cutting ramp for ramp may seem strange, but hear me out: Cost reducers have diminishing returns since they affect a relatively small number of cards. This deck already has two artifact cost reducers (Enthusiastic Mechanaut and Etherium Sculptor), so the third is pretty redundant, and Cloud Key is the worst of these effect due to its cost. Adding the more ubiquitous Talisman of Creativity is a clear upgrade.

Talisman of Creativity + Talisman of Progress

Suggested Cut: Lonely Sandbar + Evolving Wilds

Lowering your land count to play more mana rocks is a slippery slope; ramp only gets you ahead while you make your land drops, after all. If you miss land drops, you’re just paying to keep pace with the table.

But the deck has a healthy starting land count of 40, without a massive curve, and my changes trend towards lowering the curve. There’s also a lot of card draw. All these factors make me feel comfortable cutting the worst lands, Lonely Sandbar and Evolving Wilds, to round out the Talisman trifecta with Talisman of Creativity and Talisman of Progress.

Dawn’s Truce

Suggested Cut: Chain Reaction

I don’t understand Wizards’ insistence on shoving symmetrical board wipes into decks that want to play to the board. It’s a consistent weakness in precons, one to correct whenever possible. I’d much rather have Dawn's Truce to protect me from opposing board wipes than a card that resets my board to zero.

Winds of Abandon

Suggested Cut: Fumigate

Asymmetrical board wipes are quite powerful in creature decks because they double as a catch-up mechanic that sets your opponents behind and a finisher that removes opposing blockers when you have lethal. Winds of Abandon takes that flexibility further by pivoting between spot removal and mass interaction depending on what you need, and the overloaded board wipe only costs 1 more mana than Fumigate. It might be the easiest, most obvious upgrade in the deck.

The Final Deck and New Cards

Upgrades Only

Those are my recommended changes to Counter Intelligence! If you want to pick up the full deck or just the upgrades, you can use the shopping cart button in the top corner of the second deck list.

Commanding Conclusion

Darksteel Reactor | Illustration by Kev Walker

It’s always fun to poke at Commander precons because there’s always something to learn from their flaws. Upgrading them is also a ton of fun because it lets you personalize a deck without jumping straight to a wholly unique decklist. These changes make this more of a token aggro deck, but I bet you could go for an alternate-win control deck that cares more about Darksteel Reactor if you wanted.

What do you think of these upgrades? Are you interested in playing with or against Counter Intelligence? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! If you want to learn more about upgrading precons, check out this Draftsim guide.

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!