The 35 Best Proliferate Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on November 28, 2023

Evolution Sage | Illustration by Simon Dominic

Proliferate. To increase rapidly. Multiply. Expand. Consume. Proliferation by nature can both create and destroy. It can build up a defense just as easily as it can spread an infection. The very concept of proliferation means to grow, but not everything is better in larger numbers.

Today we’re counting down the best proliferate cards in Magic. You can use them to strengthen your creatures or wither your opponents’ boards into nothing. That part’s up to you, and I’ll be showing you the best ways to do it.

What Are Proliferate Cards in MTG?

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician | Illustration by Greg Staples

A proliferate card is any card with an ability that lets you proliferate. Proliferate is a keyword action that lets you choose any number of players or permanents and put an extra counter on them for each type of counter already there. This ranges from +1/+1 counters to poison counters and even planeswalker loyalty counters. Yes, even filibuster counters on Azor's Elocutors.

This list only covers cards that proliferate, which excludes payoffs that mention proliferate but don’t actually do it themselves. For example, Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus mentions proliferate, but isn’t a “proliferate card” for the purposes of this list. I’m also leaving off Alchemy cards like Contagion Dispenser and the Unfinity sticker card Carnival Elephant Meteor because it’s just nonsense.

The best proliferation effects are cheap, repeatable, or a combination of both. The resulting effect of any given proliferate ability varies wildly depending on the gamestate, but they’re a critical part of any counter-heavy deck.

#35. Cankerbloom

Cankerbloom is an altogether well-rounded card with good stats for its cost and a flexible set of abilities. It’ll hit an artifact or enchantment more often than not, but cashing it in for a one-time proliferation is a great alternative option.

#34. Drown in Ichor

Every deck should be running some amount of single-target removal. Drown in Ichor isn’t the next Doom Blade, but it kills a large chunk of creatures you care about and spots you some extra proliferate action. Careful where you point this; if the target dies or gets sacrificed in response, you don’t get to proliferate!

#33. Inexorable Tide

The year is 2015. Everyone’s commander costs six mana. It’s turn 14 and the lowest life total at the table is 37. You just untapped with Inexorable Tide. Life is good.

Fast-forward to 2023 and cards like this don’t quite get there anymore. Rarely can you tap out in modern Magic for a do-nothing enchantment in hopes that it survives until your next turn. Inexorable Tide still has a high enough ceiling to deserve mention, but it’s not a staple of counter-based strategies anymore.

#32. Park Heights Maverick

Park Heights Maverick has a mesh of different abilities to help it push through in combat and proliferate when it hits. It’s hard to tell what deck is looking for this combination of abilities, but it pays off if you can keep connecting with it.

#31. Viral Drake

Viral Drake overcharges on just about every axis, but that’s the price you pay for infectors. Contagion Clasp usually covers this sort of repeatable proliferation, but let’s not forget that this creature has infect to get the party started on its own. The activation doesn’t require tapping either, so it can be used multiple times per turn if you’re sitting on a pile of mana.

#30. Filigree Vector

Filigree Vector asks that you build a very specific kind of deck, one with expendable artifacts that also cares about +1/+1 counters or charge counters. Pumping up your board on ETB is a nice starting point, but there aren’t many homes for this outside the Growing Threat pre-con it came in.

#28. Unnatural Restoration

Unnatural Restoration is Regrowth-lite with our mechanic of the day tacked on. That’s enough to make it a playable recursion piece for decks that care about counters of any kind.

#27. Volt Charge

Volt Charge is an overpriced Lightning Bolt that has synergy in red counter-based strategies. I personally play it in my mono-red planeswalker deck to proliferate loyalty counters and my Snapdax, Apex of the Hunt infect deck to pile on extra poison. I could also see it making the cut in Shalai and Hallar, The Swarmlord, or any deck interested in All Will Be One.

#26. Tezzeret’s Gambit

Tezzeret's Gambit? No, Remy LeBeau’s Gambit. Little X-Men joke for you there.

Divination with proliferation. That’s usually worth the extra mana or life payment, though a pure card-draw spell isn’t that exciting these days. I’m a little peeved that the Phyrexian mana theoretically lets you play this in decks without blue mana, but the color identity rules for Commander exclude it from non-blue decks.

#25. Brokers Confluence

The Brokers from Streets of New Capenna were largely built with their shield counter mechanic in mind, so it makes sense to see proliferate on Brokers Confluence. The three modes are a bit disparate for my taste, but it’s probably worth it if you can snag the Stifle mode and make the other modes matter at the same time.

#24. Throne of Geth

I’d say Throne of Geth is a proliferate effect specifically for artifact decks, but even decks without a central artifact focus can still generate Treasure, Food, and other trinkets to feed it. It can always sacrifice itself as a one-shot proliferate effect too.

#23. Expand the Sphere

If your deck cares about counters in the slightest, I’d prioritize Expand the Sphere over other Explosive Vegetation variants. One weakness of a card like Skyshroud Claim is that it doesn’t have much utility when drawn late. Expand the Sphere solves that by letting you trade in some of the ramp for proliferation instead. It can fetch two lands early or double-proliferate when you’re all set on mana.

#22. Contagion Clasp

Contagion Clasp is the little brother of a card that makes it much higher on the list. As the lesser of the two, it still does a fine job. Repeatable proliferation is at a premium, even if Clasp isn’t the most efficient way to do so.

#21. Glistening Sphere

Infect decks love Glistening Sphere, but you don’t need poison to make good use of it. If proliferating is something your deck wants to do, consider it a slow mana rock that gives you a one-time burst of counters.

#20. Contaminant Grafter

Contaminant Grafter is an excellent poison payoff. Bloated Contaminator trumps this card in terms of mana efficiency (spoilers), but Grafter provides card draw and ramp, something poison-based decks are severely lacking.

#19. Contentious Plan + Experimental Augury

Contentious Plan and Experimental Augury are proliferating cantrips, both for two mana. Augury technically gets the nod as an instant, but decks that care about proliferation are happy to run both. You often get more than two mana’s worth of a card, and you’re net even on card advantage with either one.

#18. Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres

Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres showcases my favorite type of card design: payoff and enabler all in one. You can run this out as a 4-drop, follow up with a proliferate effect or two, and draw some cards. Or you can cast it for seven mana and get two proliferates and two cards right away. Just don’t get Ezuri killed out from underneath its ETB so you don’t miss out on the card draw.

#17. Roalesk, Apex Hybrid

Roalesk, Apex Hybrid buries the lead, hiding its double-proliferate effect behind a death trigger. It sets itself up nicely though, adding some counters to another creature while being a big enough threat on its own that your opponents are incentivized to kill it.

#16. Ichormoon Gauntlet

Ichormoon Gauntlet is a wild card. It adds extra loyalty abilities to your planeswalkers, one of which lets them proliferate once per turn. There’s some obvious self-synergy there, but you also get an extra counter on something when you cast a non-creature spell. It’s not quite a full proliferation effect, but that would be just absurd.

#15. Bloated Contaminator

With bloated stats and all-upside text, Bloated Contaminator is a beating for infect/toxic decks. Each hit that connects is worth two poison on a single player plus proliferation on anything else that matters. It’s one of the best early-game plays for poison-themed decks.

#14. Contagion Engine

Here’s Contagion Clasp’s older, cooler, out-of-town brother. Contagion Engine bullies one opponent on ETB then sticks around to double-proliferate on activation. It’s usually enough to bury one player’s board while bumping up your counters, spreading poison, etc.

#13. Norn’s Choirmaster

Hmm…. I wonder what a choir full of tooth monsters sounds like. Perhaps Norn's Choirmaster can answer that for us. The card is a symphony of beautifully orchestrated abilities, stats, and combat keywords. It absolutely sings with partner commanders of any kind.

#12. Thrummingbird

An uncontested Thrummingbird is a scary turn-2 play. It comes down early with evasion to start pecking in. The damage starts off as inconsequential, but Thrummingbird usually picks up a +1/+1 counter in these decks, scaling its own damage as it churns out counters for your other permanents.

#11. Grateful Apparition

Grateful Apparition is a strictly better Thrummingbird, giving you the same cascading advantage but also triggering on damage to a planeswalker. Otherwise, it’s functionally the same and spirals out of control the same way its Phyrexian bird counterpart does.

#10. Karn’s Bastion

Karn's Bastion is usually easy to slot into the mana base of decks with counter themes, even though it doesn’t actually get activated often. Even so, it’s usually free to play and gives you mana base some added utility, just make sure it doesn’t interfere with your color commitments too much.

#9. Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos

Proliferate isn’t the focal point of Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos, but you’re not turning it down either. This has enough of a deck-building restriction to it that you can’t just jam it into any deck and hope to start proliferating, but in the artifact/Phyrexian deck it was intended for, it’s an absolute powerhouse.

#8. Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting

Proliferate as a loyalty ability is already an engine in and of itself, and Vraska, Betrayal's Sting offers much more than that. Vraska can petrify a creature with its -2 or tick up its own loyalty while drawing a card with the 0 ability. That helps work towards a potential game-winning -9. Even outside dedicated poison decks, that ultimate sets an opponent up for death with any proliferate follow-up.

#7. Planewide Celebration

Versatility is king, although I’ve seen the proliferate mode on Planewide Celebration used more often than any other. In fact, it’s quite common for this card to be cast as a quadruple proliferate effect, setting up a planeswalker ultimate out of nowhere or becoming an Overrun in +1/+1 counter decks.

#6. Staff of Compleation

I repeat: versatility is king. That said, Staff of Compleation has a real price associated with its modes. The primary mode of tapping for mana is significantly worse than your average mana rock, but it provides proliferation on a literal stick when you need it. This card doesn’t go in every deck; the key is to make good use of proliferate before the life payments catch up to you.

#5. Flux Channeler

Flux Channeler is nuttier than a pecan pie in the right deck. What’s the right deck, you ask? Well, any blue deck with counters and non-creature spells. Counters and counters, if you will. Where are you stacking all your extra counters? Planeswalkers are a good start, but Magosi, the Waterveil holds extra counters quite well.

#4. Sword of Truth and Justice

Every Sword of X&Y is playable by virtue of the protection it offers, even if the bonus effects aren’t amazing. Sword of Truth and Justice just so happens to have excellent bouses, including a +1/+1 counter and a proliferate on every hit. That means two +1/+1 counters at the minimum, and usually much more than that.

#3. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is a Jack of All Trades in Magic. Sac outlet, discard outlet, card draw, proliferator, what else could you need? Protection from one of the most prevalent creature types in the game? You got it! The Father of Machines feeds so many different types of decks, it’s no wonder it shows up on lists like this so often.

#2. Evolution Sage

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is certainly a more powerful card than Evolution Sage, but Sage is the better proliferator, specifically. Imagine all the games where you land-ramp out of control, then picture that in a counter-based deck where you get to proliferate on every landfall trigger. Evo Sage has the power to turn a basic land into a powerhouse play, which is saying a lot.

#1. Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice

According to EDHREC, Atraxa, Praetors' Voice has been the most popular commander for the last two years, and likely much longer than that. Infect, +1/+1 counters, -1/-1 counters. Atraxa has seen it all. It’s the posterchild for using simple rules text to make a powerful card. They somehow managed to follow this up with the even more egregious Atraxa, Grand Unifier. Now when people refer to the “good Atraxa,” I have to ask, “which one?”

Best Proliferate Payoffs

Proliferate is so entwined with poison counters that it’s hard to discuss one without the other. In fact, I’d argue that the only reason poison is even a viable strategy in Commander is because of the existence of proliferate as a mechanic. Infect/toxic decks rarely have the firepower to get over the finish line with just poison creatures, so they usually fall back on proliferate effects to deal the killing blow.

The most popular shell for proliferate is +1/+1 counter decks. In these builds, each proliferate effect is like an additional mini-anthem, which scales in power with counter doublers like Hardened Scales or Doubling Season.

The reverse -1/-1 counter decks also thrive off proliferation. They’re much less common and significantly less supported than their +1/+1 counter equivalents, but they allow you to weaponize proliferate against your opponents’ creatures. In other words, proliferate takes a more proactive role in +1/+1 counter decks, and a more controlling roll in -1/-1 counter decks.

No conversation about proliferate is complete without talking about planeswalkers. Superfriends decks are always on the lookout for ways to cheat extra counters on their walkers in hopes of firing off a devastating ultimate. Proliferate lets you do just that, and multi-proliferate effects like Planewide Celebration can do it when your opponents weren’t expecting it.

Experience counter commanders also benefit from proliferation. Cankerbloom is a perfect fit for Meren of Clan Nel Toth, while Thrummingbird is best friends with Ezuri, Claw of Progress.

All Countered Out

Atraxa, Praetors' Voice | |Illustration by Victor Adame Minguez

Whether you choose growth or decay, proliferate is there to move things along. It’s a fan favorite mechanic with so many natural homes that it’s certain to show up again and again. With over 70 proliferate effects already in the game, I see no signs of this mechanic stopping. It can simply continue to grow. Proliferate, if you will.

How does proliferate serve your needs in Commander? What kinds of decks do you use it in? Are there any fun and interesting counters you like to mix with it? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord.

Thank you for making Draftsim your #1 stop for all things Magic!