HARE APPARENT. go wide, then wider.

Zuko, Redeemed strategy guide

Zuko, Redeemed, the Avatar: The Last Airbender print of Rhys the Redeemed, is a SelesnyaSelesnya = green plus white. The two colors this deck plays in. 1-mana commander whose second ability reads: “{4}{G/W}{G/W}, {T}: For each creature token you control, create a token that’s a copy of that creature.” His first ability, “{2}{G/W}, {T}: Create a 1/1 green and white Elf Warrior creature token,” seeds the board when nothing else has. He is cheap, he comes down turn one off a dork, and once there are tokens to copy he doubles the whole board on tap.

The deck around him is a go-wideA go-wide deck wins by making many small creatures and attacking with all of them, rather than one big threat. token machine. Hare Apparent is the namesake: a two-mana 1/1 (it costs {1}{W}) that, on entry, makes a 1/1 Rabbit for each OTHER creature you control named Hare Apparent. The first one makes nothing; the value scales hard with every copy already down. On top of that sit the token multipliersA replacement effect that increases how many tokens you make. Ojer Taq triples, the rest double. and the anthemsAn anthem buffs your whole team at once (for example +1/+1 to all your creatures or tokens).. The list runs the full 20 copies of Hare Apparent, for maximum redundancy and the biggest token bursts.

You don’t pick a wincon at sleeves-on. You pick it at the point of attack, based on what is already on board. The deck closes one of three ways, and the combo line is the last resort, assembled late when combat has been answered.

Wincon 1 · Counter avalanche into trample

Ouroboroid doubles its own counter output every combat, Bristly Bill, Spine Sower adds a counter per land drop and doubles the whole board’s counters for {3}{G}{G}, and Cathars’ Crusade plus Germination Practicum stack counters on every body that enters. Sphere Grid hands the swollen board trample and Gavony Township keeps growing it. The tokens stop being 1/1s fast, and the swing that follows does not care about chump blockers.

Wincon 2 · Alpha strike

Craterhoof Behemoth (trample and +X/+X for your creature count the turn it enters), Beastmaster Ascension (a permanent +5/+5 once seven attackers have charged it, automatic here), or Triumph of the Hordes (+1/+1, trample, and infectInfect deals damage to players as poison counters. Ten poison counters eliminates that player., so ten poison ends a player) turns the wide board into one lethal swing, and Concordant Crossroads grants the haste to do it the same turn the board arrives. Beastmaster and Crossroads are enchantments, so the package survives creature wipes.

Wincon 3 · Backup combo: the Karmic Guide loop (slow, disclosed)

The insurance line. Karmic Guide plus Reveillark plus a free sacrifice outlet (Phyrexian Altar or Ashnod’s Altar) loops for infinite Hare ETBs, and with Phyrexian Altar infinite mana. With Cathars’ Crusade out it is infinite board-wide +1/+1 counters; win by swinging with Sphere Grid trample. Eerie Interlude protects the line, and Return to the Ranks reassembles the pieces from the graveyard. Lifelong Friendship and Formidable Speaker can each tutor a creature half; the altars have no tutor. It is a slow three-card backup, disclosed at rule zero, and you only go here after combat has stalled. See the loops section for the exact sequence and the protection that keeps it alive.

How Hare Apparent snowballs

Hare Apparent is the engine, so understand its wording exactly. On entry it creates a number of 1/1 white Rabbit tokens equal to the number of OTHER creatures you control named Hare Apparent. The card text even grants permission to run as many copies as you want, which is why the deck runs the full 20 of them.

• The first Hare makes zero Rabbits. The second makes one. The third makes two. Each additional copy is worth more than the last.
• The Rabbit tokens are named Rabbit, not Hare Apparent, so they do NOT raise the count for the next Hare. They are bodies and Skullclamp fuel, not engine pieces.
• Returning several Hares at once is the explosive line: a mass blink (Eerie Interlude) or a Return to the Ranks convoke brings them all back simultaneously, so each returning Hare counts every other one for one giant Rabbit burst. Casting them one at a time is far weaker.

Why doublers multiply

The token multipliers are replacement effectsA replacement effect changes an event as it happens. Multiple replacement effects on the same event are ordered by the affected player., and per the rules the controller chooses the order they apply. Critically, they stack multiplicativelyEach multiplier applies to the already-multiplied total, so two doublers is x4, not x2 plus x2., not additively.

• Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation triples (x3). Each doubler, Mondrak, Parallel Lives, and Doubling Season, is x2.
• One doubler is x2. Ojer alone is x3. Ojer plus one doubler is x6. Ojer plus two doublers is x12. They all multiply together.
• Mondrak doubles ALL tokens you make, not just creature tokens. Doubling Season additionally doubles +1/+1 counters, so it also doubles every Cathars’ Crusade trigger.

One Hare, every multiplier

This is the payoff math. Rows are how many OTHER Hares you already control when a new Hare Apparent resolves. Columns are the multiplier stack on the battlefield. Cells are the number of 1/1 Rabbit tokens that one new Hare creates.

Other Hares in play	x1	x2 one doubler	x3 Ojer Taq	x6 Ojer +1	x12 Ojer +2
1	1	2	3	6	12
2	2	4	6	12	24
3	3	6	9	18	36
4	4	8	12	24	48
5	5	10	15	30	60

Blinking is even better than casting one at a time: Eerie Interlude returning K Hares at once yields K times (K minus 1) base Rabbits before any multipliers, because all the Hares return simultaneously and each one sees all the others.

Loops that run away

Most of these snowball faster than the table can answer. The last one is the deck’s only true infinite, and it is the backup line.

• Eerie Interlude as a mass blink. Exile every Hare and return them at the same end step. They all re-enter simultaneously, so each Hare counts all the others. It also dodges a board wipe in response.
• Lifelong Friendship (the Avatar print of Eladamri’s Call) as an instant-speed creature tutor. Its main job is finding Craterhoof Behemoth to close a wide board, but it also grabs a missing engine (a token doubler or a token maker), a body like Grand Abolisher for protection, or a combo creature half (Karmic Guide or Reveillark) when the backup loop is live. It fetches creature cards only, so the artifact altars are the one piece it never finds.
• Formidable Speaker as the second creature tutor, this one on a body. On entry you may discard a card to search your library for any creature card and put it into your hand: Craterhoof Behemoth to close, a combo half, or a missing engine. For {1}, {T} it untaps another target permanent, pseudo-ramp on Sol Ring or Mana Vault that can also re-fire Zuko on a big turn. A second tutor alongside Lifelong Friendship, which suits the Bracket 4 build.
• Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is a one-sided sweeper stapled to an anthem. The -2/-2 wipes opponents’ mana dorks, tokens, and utility creatures on arrival and shrinks the chump blockers that are the main thing standing between a Rabbit swarm and lethal. The +2/+2 turns twenty 1/1 Rabbits into twenty 3/3s. She is a creature, so both Lifelong Friendship (the Avatar print of Eladamri’s Call) and Formidable Speaker can tutor her. Warning: Elesh Norn turns Skullclamp OFF. Your Rabbits become 3/3s, so equipping Skullclamp makes them 4/2 instead of 2/0. They no longer die, so you draw nothing. Clamp your 1/1s BEFORE Elesh Norn lands, not after. The same caution already applies to Cathars’ Crusade, Germination Practicum, and Ouroboroid counters, but Elesh Norn makes it unconditional. At seven mana she joins Craterhoof Behemoth at eight and Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation at six, so the top end is heavy. Cryptolith Rite turning the board into mana is what gets you there.
• Zuko plus the multipliers. His copy ability is multiplied by everything on the board, so a Zuko tap with two doublers out is a blowout.
• Skullclamp the Rabbits. Equip a 1/1 Rabbit, it dies, draw two. Do NOT clamp the 2-power Hares, and clamp fresh 1/1 tokens BEFORE Cathars’ Crusade or an anthem land lifts their toughness above 1, or the +1/-1 will not kill them. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite turns Skullclamp OFF. Your Rabbits become 3/3s, so equipping Skullclamp makes them 4/2 instead of 2/0. They no longer die, so you draw nothing. Clamp your 1/1s BEFORE Elesh Norn lands, not after. The same caution already applies to Cathars’ Crusade, Germination Practicum, and Ouroboroid counters, but Elesh Norn makes it unconditional.
• Cathars’ Crusade puts a +1/+1 counter on your entire board every single time any creature enters, so a token-heavy turn snowballs counters out of control. It is the first of two resilient counter engines and it powers Sphere Grid.
• Germination Practicum is the second resilient counter engine, and it is hard to answer. It is a Lesson sorcery that puts two +1/+1 counters on each creature you control, then exiles itself, and through its Paradigm keyword it lets you cast a free copy from exile at the beginning of each of your first main phases for the rest of the game. So once it has resolved once it pumps the entire board every single turn with no card on the battlefield to remove, which both grows the swarm and switches on Sphere Grid’s trample alongside Cathars’ Crusade.
• Ouroboroid is the snowballing counter engine. At the beginning of combat on your turn it puts X +1/+1 counters on each creature you control, where X is its power, and it counts itself, so it doubles every turn: 1, then 2, then 4, then 8, across your whole board at once. It turns on Sphere Grid trample board-wide immediately and feeds Terrasymbiosis draws. It is removable and slow to start, but the ceiling is enormous.
• Bristly Bill, Spine Sower stacks counters off the land drops. Its landfall puts a +1/+1 counter on a target creature for every land you play, and {3}{G}{G} doubles the number of +1/+1 counters on every creature you control, a lethal button stacked on top of Cathars’ Crusade, Germination Practicum, Gavony Township, and Ouroboroid.
• Sphere Grid plus a counter engine. Sphere Grid’s Unlock Ability gives reach and trample to any creature with a +1/+1 counter. With Cathars’ Crusade, Germination Practicum, or an Ouroboroid combat trigger putting counters on the whole board, the pair hands the entire swarm trample and fixes chump blocks without needing a finisher on the table.
• Anthem lands turn on Sphere Grid too. Abandoned Air Temple and Gavony Township (its {2}{G}{W}, {T} ability) add repeatable board-wide +1/+1 counters, which both grow the team and switch on Sphere Grid’s trample.
• Akroma’s Memorial is the closer anthem. For {7} your whole team gains flying, first strike, vigilance, trample, haste, and protection from black and from red. Haste swings the swarm the turn it resolves, flight and trample carry it over blockers, and the protection blanks black and red spot removal and most red wraths, so dropping it on a wide board is usually lethal on the spot.
• Beastmaster Ascension turns on the first time you attack with seven or more creatures, automatic in this deck. Each attacking creature you control adds a quest counter, and at seven or more the whole team keeps a permanent +5/+5 for as long as the enchantment sits there. It survives creature wipes, a third resilient closing line, and it pairs with Concordant Crossroads for a same-turn kill: build the board, grant it haste, swing.
• Concordant Crossroads is the kill-turn enabler. All creatures have haste, so the board you build this turn, a Zuko doubling, a Raise the Past rebuild, a fresh Hare burst, alpha strikes immediately: Craterhoof Behemoth, Beastmaster Ascension, Triumph of the Hordes, and Ouroboroid do not grant haste on their own, and Crossroads closes that gap. It is symmetric, every opponent’s creatures get haste too, so hold it for the lethal turn; dropping it early only accelerates opponents.
• Utility lands that earn their slot. Boseiju, Who Endures taps for green and channels for {1}{G} (discard it) to destroy an artifact, enchantment, or nonbasic land an opponent controls, with the target player allowed to fetch a basic in return. That is repeatable interaction tucked into a land, so removal lives in the deck without giving up a spell. Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth makes every land you and everyone else controls a Forest in addition to its other types, so all of your lands tap for green and the green-heavy curve (Craterhoof at {5}{G}{G}{G}, Ouroboroid, Formidable Speaker) always has its color. It fixes the whole mana base off one drop. Plaza of Heroes taps for {C}, and while you control a legendary permanent (Zuko always qualifies once he is down) it taps for green or white among your legends, so it fixes the two-color curve and chips in a hexproof-and-indestructible shield for a legendary creature at need.
• Card-draw lands for a wide board. Minas Tirith taps for white and, once you have attacked with two or more creatures this turn, pays {1}{W}, {T} to draw a card, which a go-wide deck turns on almost every combat. Bonders’ Enclave draws for {3}, {T} as long as you control a creature with power 4 or greater, trivially true once an anthem or Cathars’ counters lift a body. Both are repeatable card advantage tucked into the mana base. Reliquary Tower removes your maximum hand size so the engine can hold a big hand without discarding on a flooded turn.
• Karn’s Bastion proliferates your counters. For {4}, {T} it gives each permanent with a counter another counter of each kind, so it adds a +1/+1 to every creature an anthem or Cathars’ Crusade has already grown, and it advances the charge counters on Evendo, Waking Haven toward its 12-counter unlock once you have Stationed it once. It both pumps the board and feeds Sphere Grid.
• Terrasymbiosis as a repeatable card-advantage payoff on the counter package. Once each turn, whenever you put one or more +1/+1 counters on a creature you control, you may draw that many cards. Cathars’ Crusade, Germination Practicum, Gavony Township, Abandoned Air Temple, and a Karn’s Bastion proliferate all feed it, so it draws roughly one to two cards a turn, and more when Doubling Season is doubling the counters first. The once-per-turn cap keeps it in check, but in a counters deck that cap is met nearly every turn.
• Trouble in Pairs as passive card advantage. Once it is down you draw a card whenever an opponent attacks you with two or more creatures, draws their second card in a turn, or casts their second spell in a turn, so a multiplayer table feeds you cards every turn cycle while you build the board. It also makes opponents skip any extra turn they would begin, quietly shutting off one of the few things a token deck cannot race.
• The One Ring is the card-advantage engine. It is a {4} indestructible artifact, and casting it grants you protection from everything until your next turn, a shield that covers YOU and not your board, so it does not stop a wipe. {T} puts a burden counter on it and draws a card for each burden counter, with your upkeep costing 1 life per counter. A Game Changer.
• Return to the Ranks as a mass reanimation burst. It costs {X}{W}{W} with convoke, so a wide board pays most of it: tap your tokens to cast it big for cheap, then return X creature cards with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield at once. Hare Apparent costs {1}{W}, so it qualifies, and bringing back a stack of Hares simultaneously means each returning Hare sees all the others for one giant Rabbit burst, the same simultaneous-ETB trick as a mass blink. It doubles as board-wipe insurance and a second way to reassemble the backup combo (return Karmic Guide and a Hare in one cast). Convoke it off the swarm the turn after a wrath to rebuild in a single spell.
• Raise the Past is the best board-wipe insurance in the deck. For {2}{W}{W} it returns every creature card with mana value 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield at once, and since Hare Apparent costs {1}{W} that brings back every dead Hare in a single cast. Because they all re-enter simultaneously, each returning Hare counts all the others for one giant Rabbit burst, the same simultaneous-ETB trick as a mass blink, and with a counter engine out the wave of enters also fires a fresh round of board-wide counters. It is the cleanest answer to a wrath: one card rebuilds the whole swarm.
• Backup combo: Karmic Guide plus Reveillark plus Phyrexian Altar. This is the one infinite loop in the deck, and it is the insurance line, not the plan. Karmic Guide (it costs {3}{W}{W}) is a flying body whose enter ability returns a creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Reveillark (it costs {4}{W}) reads: when it leaves the battlefield, return up to two creature cards with power 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. Karmic Guide is power 2, so Reveillark can return it. With a free sacrifice outlet on the board, sacrifice Karmic Guide and Reveillark to it. Reveillark’s leave trigger returns two power-2-or-less creatures, one of which is Karmic Guide; Karmic Guide’s enter trigger returns Reveillark. Both are back, and the outlet made mana on the way. Repeat for infinite mana, infinite enter triggers, and infinite Hare ETBs if a Hare is in the yard to bring back in the loop. The deck runs two outlets so the loop has redundancy: Phyrexian Altar (sacrifice a creature: add one mana of any color) makes colored mana, and Ashnod’s Altar (sacrifice a creature: add {C}{C}) is a second free outlet that also doubles as value-and-ramp fuel outside the combo. Either one closes the loop, so a single piece of artifact removal does not break it. With Cathars’ Crusade out, every one of those enters puts a counter on the whole board, so the team grows arbitrarily large; close with a Sphere Grid trample swing. Eerie Interlude protects the loop from a wipe mid-assembly. Lifelong Friendship and Formidable Speaker can each tutor a creature half, and the altars have no tutor; it is a slow three-card backup, disclosed at rule zero, so treat it as a late-game bonus, not a target.

Mulligans, what to keep

The deck wants a hand that does something every turn off its dense engine.

Snap keep

Two or three lands, a token maker, and a doubler or a payoff. That is the hand that does something every turn. Birds of Paradise into an early Zuko is ideal. A hand that is mostly Hares is a fine keep, because more Hares is the plan.

Ship back

A doubler with nothing to double. Doubling Season on turn three with no token engine is a blank. Also ship all-lands and all-spells-no-mana.

Do NOT keep a hand built around the backup combo. The loop is a slow three-card line and the altars have no tutor, so a Karmic Guide plus Reveillark opener with no board plan is a trap. Keep for the go-wide engine and let the combo show up later if it does.

Protecting the swarm, best to worst

The whole deck is a wide board, so a single wipe is the loss condition. Protect against it.

• Teferi’s Protection is the premium answer. It phases out all your permanents and makes your life total unchangeable until your next turn, so a wrath or a lethal swing-back hits nothing. It doubles as a fog. This is a Game Changer and the best protection in the deck.
• Grand Abolisher locks opponents out of your turn. While it is on the battlefield, your opponents cannot cast spells or activate abilities of artifacts, creatures, or enchantments during your turn, so your doubler turns, your alpha strike, and the combo all resolve without instant-speed interaction. Land it before the turn you commit and the wide swing or the loop goes unanswered. It is a {W}{W} 2/2, so it dies to a wipe and does not stop triggered or static abilities, but on your own turn it shuts the door on counters, removal, and flash blockers.
• Mayor Tong of Chin Village (the Avatar print of Drannith Magistrate) is the standing lock. While it is down, your opponents can cast spells only from their hands: no commanders from the command zone, no flashback, no casting out of graveyards or exile, all game and not just on your turn. It is hard hate against combo and commander-reliant decks, and it guards your board by starving the table of its best rebuild lines. A {1}{W} 1/3 and a Game Changer, so expect it to eat removal.
• Heroic Intervention gives the team hexproof and indestructible for two mana. Hold one up on the turn you go wide.
• Akroma’s Memorial doubles as protection: the whole team gains protection from black and from red, so black and red spot removal, targeted edicts, and red-based wraths bounce off it. It does not cover white or blue answers or a colorless wipe, but against the two most common removal colors it keeps the swarm intact while also making it lethal.
• Eerie Interlude blinks your creatures out of a wipe and returns them at end of turn, growing the Hare count on the way back, and it protects the backup combo mid-assembly.
• Lightning Greaves is the moveable protection. Shroud and haste with a free equip guards one key creature, Zuko, Ouroboroid, or Bristly Bill, Spine Sower, the turn it lands. It does not stop a board wipe, it guards one creature rather than the team, and shroud blocks your own pumps and equips targeting the carrier too, so move it off before you need to point a Bristly Bill counter or anything else at that creature.
• The simplest insurance is to hold back one Hare or one protection spell rather than committing every card before you have to.

Tokens to bring

Sleeve a token box before the pod. You will need a stack of 1/1 white Rabbits, 1/1 green and white Elf Warriors (Zuko), and Squirrels (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl). With the multipliers running you will make more tokens than most boxes hold, so over-pack.

Cards that did not make it

These were considered and cut, swapped in, sided to the board, or owned and benched on purpose. The four Game Changers, Mana Vault, Teferi’s Protection, The One Ring, and Mayor Tong of Chin Village, are all in at Bracket 4.

• Selesnya Signet: in the sideboard, kept as a flex ramp option. It is reliable two-color fixing that does not depend on the table, so it comes in over Birds of Paradise against wrath-heavy pods, where a rock survives a board wipe and a dork does not.
• Burgeoning: moved to the sideboard from the maindeck. Explosive multiplayer ramp that feeds on opponents’ land drops, so it is still strong in a heavy four-player pod. Swap it back in for the grindier Terrasymbiosis when the table is fast and multiplayer and you would rather race than grind.
• Helm of the Host: in the sideboard. Copying a Hare each combat is the slowest of the token engines, and the slot was replaced by Trouble in Pairs for passive multiplayer card advantage. It stays in the box as a flex piece.
• Conclave Mentor: owned but BENCHED on purpose. It is a counter amplifier (each batch of +1/+1 counters put on a creature you control gets one more), so it overlaps with the counter axis already carried by Cathars’ Crusade and Germination Practicum. Bring it in only when you want to lean hard into the counter plan; otherwise it stays in the box.
• Dryad Arbor: owned but BENCHED on purpose. A 0-cost land that is also a green creature is cute with the token plan, but it does nothing the rest of the mana base does not, so it sits in the box.
• Cultivate: its slot went first to instant-speed board development and has since gone to Ouroboroid, a snowballing counter engine over pure ramp and fixing.
• Adagia, Windswept Bastion: cut for Akroma’s Memorial. The Station land rarely came online, and the Memorial is a hard closer that hands the whole swarm flight, haste, and trample while protecting it from black and red. The land count drops to 35, still comfortable off Birds of Paradise, the artifact fast mana, and a one-mana commander.
• Lush Portico and Scattered Groves: replaced by Boseiju, Who Endures and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth for utility lands that interact or fix the whole base rather than entering tapped for color alone.
• Anointed Procession: cut for Finale of Devastation. Four doublers plus the triple from Ojer Taq already overflow the board, so the fifth-doubler slot becomes a finisher that tutors Craterhoof Behemoth onto the battlefield and, at X of ten or more, hands the whole swarm +X/+X and haste. It had itself replaced Felidar Retreat here.
• Mentor of the Meek: replaced by Karmic Guide, which doubles as a recursion piece and a combo half.
• Elvish Mystic: replaced by Mana Vault for faster, bigger fast mana.
• Unbreakable Formation: not a maindeck cut anymore. The maindeck protection slot went to Teferi’s Protection, and Unbreakable Formation moved to the sideboard as a board-wipe answer that also pumps the team. It comes in against sweeper-heavy pods; see the When to sideboard section.
• Flex pool: cards on hand that are legal but did not make the 99, kept as swap fodder: Thought Vessel, Pearl Medallion, Duty Beyond Death, Take Up the Shield, and surplus taplands.

When to sideboard

This is a pre-game adjustment in Commander. You tune the list before the game based on who is at the table, not mid-match. The maindeck is built for a default multiplayer pod; these swaps shore up specific matchups. The full sideboard is the seven matchup swaps below, the two flex ramp options noted above (Selesnya Signet and Burgeoning), and the two benched cards covered at the end.

The two benched cards, Conclave Mentor and Dryad Arbor, stay in the box. Conclave Mentor comes in only when you want to lean hard into the counter axis, and Dryad Arbor does nothing the rest of the mana base does not.