Primal Vigor vs. Doubling Season: Pros and Cons — Which Should You Play?

Doubling Season | Illustration by Eva Eskelinen

Ah yes, a debate as old as time, assuming time started when Commander 2013 printed Primal Vigor. That marked the second coming of Doubling Season… or did it?

It’s impossible to mention one of these enchantments without including the other in the same conversation, but which one truly deserves the title of “Best 5-mana Green Token/Counter Doubler?” The answer’s somewhat obvious, but there’s still a lot to unpack between these two cards. Let’s settle this.

Primal Vigor vs. Doubling Season

The abilities on Primal Vigor and Doubling Season can be boiled down to two simple effects: double counters, and double tokens. If you left it at that, they’d be nearly identical, but there are key differences beneath the surface.

• Primal Vigor is a symmetrical effect that applies to all players. Doubling Season only applies to you.
• Primal Vigor only doubles +1/+1 counters. Doubling Season doubles all types of counters.
• Doubling Season only doubles counters/tokens created by an effect. Primal Vigor doesn’t specify what the source of the counters/tokens is.
• Doubling Season is legal in Modern. Primal Vigor is not.

Does Primal Vigor Affect Opponents?

Primal Vigor affects all players, you and your opponents. When all is said and done, this is the main reason I’ll be advocating for Doubling Season over Primal Vigor at nearly every juncture.

Obviously if you’re the one putting Primal Vigor in your deck, you should have good ways to use it, but every deck creates tokens now, and most decks have incidental +1/+1 counter effects floating around. This is a 5-mana enchantment we’re talking about. You can’t afford to be the one spending a turn to cast this spell only to have your opponents be the first ones who take advantage of it, and possibly even blow it up before it gets back to your turn to actually get a benefit from it.

Imagine the scenario where you cast Primal Vigor and pass the turn. An opponent casts Dockside Extortionist (still legal for some reason) and makes double Treasure tokens off your card, and proceeds to win the game with some combo loop. Or an opponent’s commander is Rhys the Redeemed and you just incidentally doubled their token generation. These are unacceptable situations that aren’t that unlikely to happen, and don’t happen at all with Doubling Season.

Example Combos

Doubling effects lend themselves to combos quite easily, with the following being some of the more common combos with Primal Vigor and Doubling Season.

Ashnod's Altar + Slimefoot, the Stowaway or Ghave, Guru of Spores

This combo works with either enchantment. Create a token with either Slimefoot, the Stowaway or Ghave, Guru of Spores, double that token with your enchantment, then sacrifice both tokens to Ashnod's Altar for 4 mana. That mana can be looped back into the activated ability, creating infinite drains with Slimefoot’s triggered ability, or infinite tokens and +1/+1 counters with Ghave’s abilities.

Tooth and Claw + Blood Artist

With either enchantment in play, Tooth and Claw lets you sacrifice any two creatures to create two more creature tokens. Add in Blood Artist or anything that deals damage as creatures die for an infinite gain + drain combo.

Doubling Season + Planeswalkers

Doubling Season has the distinct advantage of doubling loyalty counters when a planeswalker enters the battlefield (but not when they use a + ability!). That puts most planeswalkers in range of ultimates as soon as they hit the battlefield, which is often good enough for a win. You can make infinite copies of Jace, Cunning Castaway, pop Tamiyo, Field Researcher right away, or spin the wheels with Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.

Price

If it sounds like I’m being negative towards Primal Vigor (and I am), the price tag is where it has a distinct advantage over Doubling Season.

At the time of writing, the cheapest copies of Doubling Season are around $35-$40 on TCGplayer. That’s immediately after two back-to-back reprints in Commander Masters and Wilds of Eldraine‘s Enchanting Tales bonus sheet. Notably, Doubling Season has seen six different printings across booster products.

You can grab an Enchanting Tales version of Primal Vigor for less than $5 on TCGplayer right now, with other versions in the $10-$20 range. Primal Vigor has only been printed four times, with a single booster pack printing, and a Commander precon + Secret Lair version. Fewer printings and still half the price of Doubling Season makes it the obvious budget-conscious version, if you have to choose between one or the other.

Corner Cases

In case it’s not clear, price and budget withstanding, you should always prioritize Doubling Season over Primal Vigor, to the point where I’d honestly recommend not even playing Primal Vigor because of how advantageous it can be to your opponents. Still, let’s address some corner case situations where this isn’t necessarily so cut and dry.

• If you’re playing a group hug style deck, you might actively want to help your opponents out, which makes Primal Vigor the first-pick choice.
• If you’re playing or anticipate playing against detrimental counters, you might want to avoid Doubling Season, since it doubles all types of counters. It’ll make your own Thing in the Ice harder to flip, and Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle takes twice as long to wake up. It also doubles any stun counters or -1/-1 counters put on your creatures, regardless of who controlled the effect.

There are also some specific notes that aren’t directly comparing the two:

• Doubling Season only doubles counters/tokens that were created by an effect, which is why using the + ability on a planeswalker doesn’t add double loyalty counters (adding the counters is a cost of the ability, not an effect).
• Copying a permanent spell usually results in that permanent entering the battlefield as a token (see: Lithoform Engine or Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief). The token doublers do not cause extra permanents to enter the battlefield this way, since the tokens weren’t created by anything, they simply enter play because the copy of the permanent spell resolved.

When Should You Play Both?

Redundancy is the main reason to play both Doubling Season and Primal Vigor in the same deck. Again, bias towards Doubling Season first, with Primal Vigor as the back-up if you have budgetary concerns. Either way, if a token/counter doubling effect is absolutely essential to your deck’s strategy, you want to make sure you have the best chances of drawing those effects, and running both increases the odds you draw one.

Of course, if your entire deck revolves around one of these doublers, I’d advocate running just Doubling Season and a few specific tutors like Idyllic Tutor before I ever sign off on running Primal Vigor. Sorry, I just don’t respect the card folks.

Running both in tandem also gives you the potential to stack these replacement effects together. With both enchantments on board, your token and counter production is quadrupled, which is always fun. Necessary? No. But fun.

Wrap Up

Doubling Season | Illustration by Kemonomichi

I hate to burst the bubble of any Primal Vigor lovers out there, but I find the card to be quite horrendous in a meta full of Treasure tokens, and I always caution against being the player who spends their mana and cards on effects that help everyone else out just as much as you.

Of course, I’m not here to yuck your yum, and Doubling Season is twice the price, so as always, play what makes you happy and what works for you! Now it’s time for you to sound off. Am I being too harsh on Primey-V? Are there other corner cases where you’d rather have it over Doubling Season? Have you ever won off the back of an opponent’s effect? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord.

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