HARE APPARENT. go wide, then wider.

Opening hands

Seven cards from this build. Commanders start in the command zone. In multiplayer Commander, the first mulligan is free. For later mulligans, draw seven again; once you keep, put one card on the bottom for each mulligan beyond the free one.

KeepShow the seven

• Forest
• Plains
• Command Tower
• Hare Apparent
• Hare Apparent
• Sol Ring
• Heroic Intervention

T1 Forest can cast Rhys from the command zone or Ring. T2 Plains casts a Hare; T3 Tower supports the next Hare and a choice between development and holding protection. The commander is separate from these seven.

BorderlineShow the seven

• Plains
• Command Tower
• Hare Apparent
• Hare Apparent
• Cryptolith Rite
• Swords to Plowshares
• Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation

T1 commander, T2 Hare is functional. Without land three, choose Rite or another Hare and delay Ojer; the new bodies need to survive summoning sickness before tapping for Rite.

MulliganShow the seven

• Forest
• Hare Apparent
• Hare Apparent
• Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation
• Doubling Season
• Akroma's Memorial
• Craterhoof Behemoth

No white source casts the Hares and no acceleration funds the top end. Do not count Rhys in the command zone as fixing the hand.

Zuko, Redeemed strategy guide

Pace and examples. Turn windows below are author estimates and illustrative sequences, not measured multiplayer results or guarantees. A first opponent eliminated is not a whole-table win. In multiplayer the first mulligan is free; later mulligans follow the London procedure. The commander starts in the command zone, outside the seven-card examples.

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 single untapped land, 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 2/2 (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.

Win conditions

Wincon 1 · Counter avalanche into trample

Ouroboroid doubles its own counter output every combat, Bristly Bill, Spine Sower adds a counter every time a land you control enters and doubles the whole board’s counters for {3}{G}{G}, and Cathars’ Crusade stacks counters on your whole board every time a creature you control enters. Germination Practicum is the once-a-turn version rather than an enter trigger: a sorcery that puts two +1/+1 counters on each creature you control, then recurs as a free copy from exile at the beginning of each of your first main phases, so there is no permanent on the battlefield for removal to answer. Sphere Grid hands the swollen board trample, Gavony Township keeps growing it, and Elspeth, Storm Slayer’s 0 adds a counter to every creature you control and gives them flying until your next turn. 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), a ten-plus Finale of Devastation, or Akroma’s Memorial 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. Elspeth, Storm Slayer’s 0 is the repeatable evasion: board-wide flying until your next turn, every turn you want it.

Wincon 3 · Two infinite loops, both disclosed

The Squirrel line is the fast one and it is not slow insurance: Cryptolith Rite plus Concordant Crossroads plus The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl makes unbounded Squirrels and unbounded mana, because her {1}{G}{G}{G} creates X Squirrels where X is your Squirrel count, so each activation at least doubles that count off a flat four-mana cost and never re-taps a Squirrel it already used. The Karmic Guide line is the slow one: Karmic Guide plus Reveillark plus a free sacrifice outlet (Phyrexian Altar or Ashnod’s Altar) loops for infinite creature enters and infinite mana. Under Cathars’ Crusade either loop grows the whole board without bound; close with a Sphere Grid trample swing. Aura Shards turns either loop into a one-sided sweep of every artifact and enchantment at the table, and Guide of Souls turns the same enters into unbounded life and energy. See the loops section for the exact sequences, including the four-Squirrel threshold on the Squirrel line and the sacrifice order that the Karmic Guide line depends on.

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, Aura Shards triggers, and Gaea’s Cradle mana, 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 continuous effect that watches for an event and replaces it with a different one as it happens, rather than triggering afterwards (CR 614.1). When several would apply to the same event, the affected object's controller or the affected player picks the order (CR 616.1)., 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), and its triple applies to CREATURE tokens only. Each doubler, Mondrak, Elspeth, Storm Slayer, and Doubling Season, is x2. Ojer Taq also refuses to stay dead: when it dies it returns tapped and transformed as the land Temple of Civilization, and the land flips back to the God for {2}{W} at sorcery speed once you have attacked with three or more creatures that turn, trivial in this deck, so the triple recurs through destruction-based removal.
• One doubler is x2. Ojer alone is x3. Ojer plus one doubler is x6. Ojer plus two doublers is x12. Ojer plus all three is x24, the ceiling on the multiplier stack itself.
• Mondrak, Elspeth, Storm Slayer, and Doubling Season all double ALL tokens you make, not just creature tokens, so all three double Smothering Tithe Treasures; only Ojer Taq’s triple is restricted to creature tokens. Doubling Season additionally doubles +1/+1 counters, so it doubles every Cathars’ Crusade trigger, and because loyalty counters are counters it also lands Elspeth on double her printed starting loyalty.

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	x24 Ojer +3
1	1	2	3	6	12	24
2	2	4	6	12	24	48
3	3	6	9	18	36	72
4	4	8	12	24	48	96
5	5	10	15	30	60	120

Those cells assume one enter trigger per Hare. With Roaming Throne on the battlefield naming Rabbit each Hare triggers twice, so every cell doubles.

Blinking beats casting one at a time. Eerie Interlude returning K Hares simultaneously yields K times (K minus 1) base Rabbits if those are the only Hares you control, because each returning Hare sees the other K minus 1. Any Hare that stayed on the battlefield counts too, so with J Hares left behind the burst is K times (K minus 1 plus J), before any multipliers, and exactly twice that with Roaming Throne naming Rabbit.

Loops that run away

Most of these snowball faster than the table can answer. Two of them go infinite, and both are disclosed at rule zero.

• The Squirrel loop, and it is the fast one. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is a Squirrel herself, and her second ability reads {1}{G}{G}{G}: create X 1/1 Squirrel tokens, where X is the number of Squirrels you control. Cryptolith Rite gives each of your creatures “{T}: Add one mana of any color,” and Concordant Crossroads gives the fresh tokens haste so they can tap the moment they arrive. Each activation costs four mana, which means tapping four creatures, and pays you X new untapped Squirrels. Because X counts every Squirrel you control, each activation at least doubles the Squirrel count, and it never re-taps a Squirrel it already used: the four mana comes out of the batch the previous activation just made. Four Squirrels tap for exactly what an activation costs, that activation makes four more, those four pay the next one exactly, and from there the batch runs eight, sixteen, thirty-two with mana to spare. With any doubler out the bar drops to two, though those two cover only two of that activation’s four mana; ordinary Hares and Rabbits bridge that one gap, since Rite taps any creature you control, not just Squirrels. It makes unbounded Squirrels and unbounded mana. One precision note for a pod that asks for the exact sequence: this is exponential growth you choose when to stop rather than a loop that returns to a repeated game state. It is disclosed as a combo either way. Seedborn Muse is not a piece of this loop. The line needs no untapper at all. She is a value engine, and the section below covers what she actually does.
• 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. Target the Hares, never the Rabbits. Eerie Interlude returns cards, and a token that leaves the battlefield ceases to exist, so any Rabbit, Squirrel, Soldier, or Elf Warrior you blink is gone for good. The same is true of blinking away a wipe: the token half of your board does not come back. Two combo-adjacent notes. Blinking Reveillark is a leaves-the-battlefield event, so its trigger fires and returns two power-2-or-less creature cards from the graveyard before Reveillark itself comes back. Blinking Karmic Guide is a trap: it comes under your control again, so its echo {3}{W}{W} comes due at your next upkeep.
• 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 Seedborn Muse, who in a four-player pod turns one Zuko activation a cycle into four, or a combo creature half (Karmic Guide or Reveillark) when the backup loop is live. It fetches creature cards only, so it never finds the altars; Enlightened Tutor covers that half.
• 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.
• Survival of the Fittest as the repeatable creature tutor, and the discard cost is upside in this deck. It costs {1}{G}, and every activation is {G} plus a discarded creature card: search your library for a creature card, reveal that card, put it into your hand, then shuffle. Anything the deck wants is one activation away, Craterhoof Behemoth to close, a missing Mondrak or Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation, or either combo half. The fuel is free, because the cards it pitches do not stay dead: Hare Apparent is mana value 2, so Raise the Past returns every Hare you discarded in one cast, and it is a 2/2, so Reveillark’s leave trigger can grab one at power 2. It digs and stocks the graveyard in the same activation, with twenty Hares as free fuel, and it assembles the Karmic Guide line on demand: pitch a Hare for Karmic Guide, pitch another for Reveillark.
• Enlightened Tutor as the toolbox. For {W} at instant speed it finds any artifact or enchantment and puts it on TOP of your library, not into your hand, so it costs you a draw step: cast it on the end step before your turn and you draw it immediately. Among the four multipliers it reaches only Doubling Season; Mondrak and Ojer Taq are creature-tutor targets for Lifelong Friendship, Formidable Speaker, Survival of the Fittest, or Finale of Devastation, and no tutor in the deck finds Elspeth, Storm Slayer. It also grabs Aura Shards against a rock-heavy table, Akroma’s Memorial to close, Smothering Tithe to fund the turn, Survival of the Fittest for the repeatable creature tutor, The One Ring, Mana Vault, or either combo altar. It is one of five tutors, and the only one that searches for anything other than a creature or a basic land (Kodama’s Reach finds basics; Krosan Verge finds a Forest and a Plains, including qualifying nonbasics such as Temple Garden or Canopy Vista).
• Aura Shards is the removal engine, and in this deck it is closer to a lock than a spell. Whenever a creature you control enters you may destroy target artifact or enchantment. Tokens count, so one Hare Apparent resolving with three other Hares out is four separate destroy triggers, one for the Hare itself and one for each Rabbit it makes, or seven with Roaming Throne naming Rabbit, and a Zuko copy activation under a multiplier can strip every rock, anthem, and stax piece off the table in a single batch. The trigger is a “may,” so you are never forced to blow up your own Doubling Season. This is the most table-warping card in the 99 and it deserves its own sentence in the pregame.
• Seedborn Muse plus Zuko. She untaps all your permanents during each other player’s untap step, so in a four-player pod Zuko taps four times a cycle instead of once, and every one of those taps is multiplied by whatever doublers are out. She also untaps your lands, so Enlightened Tutor, Heroic Intervention, or Aang’s Shelter can be held up on somebody else’s turn without costing you your own. With Cryptolith Rite out she untaps the token swarm too, so the whole board produces its full mana on every player’s turn, and that pairing is what actually funds holding up protection while still casting on your own turn. One caution: she grants no haste, so tokens you made on your own turn are still summoning sick during those extra untaps unless Concordant Crossroads or Akroma’s Memorial is out.
• Smothering Tithe taxes the whole table. Whenever an opponent draws a card they either pay {2} or you get a Treasure, and that includes every draw step, so a four-player pod pays you three times a round before anyone casts a cantrip. Mondrak, Elspeth, Storm Slayer, and Doubling Season all double the Treasures; only Ojer Taq’s triple skips them. It is how a five-mana turn becomes a seven-mana turn.
• Guide of Souls turns the flood into a cushion. Whenever another creature you control enters you gain 1 life and get an energy counter, so one Hare burst banks life and energy by the dozen. Whenever you attack you may pay three energy to put two +1/+1 counters and a flying counter on an attacking creature, which also becomes an Angel. At {W} it is the cheapest creature in the ninety-nine, matched at mana value one only by Zuko himself.
• 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 Lifelong Friendship, Formidable Speaker, and Survival of the Fittest can all tutor her. 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 all three doublers and Ojer Taq out is the x24 ceiling applied to your entire creature-token board at once.
• Roaming Throne multiplies triggers, not tokens. It is a {4} 4/4 artifact creature with ward {2}, and as it enters you name a creature type, a choice locked in on entry. Name Rabbit and every Hare Apparent enter trigger fires twice, so each Hare makes two separate batches of Rabbits and the whole multiplier stack applies to each batch. It is not a fifth multiplier. The doublers and Ojer Taq are replacement effects and their ceiling is still x24 on each batch; the Throne hands that stack a second batch to multiply, not a bigger number to multiply by. It also makes nothing out of nothing: a lone Hare with no other Hares out counts zero others, and zero doubled is still zero. It does nothing for the 1/1 Rabbits themselves, which have no triggered abilities, and it never doubles Cathars’ Crusade, which is an enchantment and not a creature, so no naming choice reaches it. Name Plant instead when the Hares are not the engine that turn: Ouroboroid’s beginning-of-combat trigger fires twice and the second instance reads its already-grown power, so a combat that would have put four counters on the whole board puts twelve, and Bristly Bill, Spine Sower is a Plant Druid too, so his landfall trigger doubles alongside it. Ward {2} taxes every spot removal spell pointed at it by {2}, though it does nothing against a sweeper, and it is a creature, so it feeds Cathars’ Crusade on the way in and convokes Return to the Ranks, where being colorless means it pays {1} of X and never the {W}{W}.
• Cathars’ Crusade puts a +1/+1 counter on your entire board every single time a creature you control 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 your lands. Its landfall puts a +1/+1 counter on a target creature every time a land you control enters, land drops and Kodama’s Reach or Krosan Verge fetches alike, 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 every creature you control that has a +1/+1 counter on it. With Cathars’ Crusade, Germination Practicum, an Ouroboroid combat trigger, or an Elspeth 0 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 protection stops black/red targeting and damage, including red damage sweepers, but not untargeted destruction, exile, sacrifice or toughness reduction, so dropping it on a wide board is usually lethal on the spot. Enlightened Tutor finds it.
• 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, 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, and Ouroboroid do not grant haste on their own, and Crossroads closes that gap. It is also the piece that turns the Squirrel line into a loop, because new Squirrel tokens need haste before Cryptolith Rite lets them tap for mana. It is symmetric, every opponent’s creatures get haste too, so hold it for the lethal turn; dropping it early only accelerates opponents.
• Gaea’s Cradle ties the Cryptolith Rite swarm as the biggest mana source in the deck. {T}: Add {G} for each creature you control, so it reads the board this deck is already building: a swarm of twenty-plus Rabbits turns one land into twenty-plus green mana. Sequencing is the whole card. Tap it AFTER the token doubling, never before, because it counts creatures at the moment you activate it, so resolving a Zuko copy activation or a Hare Apparent burst first is what makes it enormous. Formidable Speaker’s {1}, {T} untaps another target permanent, so pointing it at the Cradle buys a second full payout the same turn. Seedborn Muse untaps it during every opponent’s untap step, which is another payout on every turn of the cycle, and that is how a wide board pays for Craterhoof Behemoth, a ten-plus Finale of Devastation, or protection held up on somebody else’s turn.
• 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 search out a land with a basic land type and put it onto the battlefield, so a shock land or a Triome qualifies, not just a basic. That is one-shot interaction tucked into a land, and it is the backup to Aura Shards rather than the primary answer now. Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth makes every land a Forest in addition to its other types, so all of your lands tap for green and the green-heavy curve always has its color. Plaza of Heroes taps for {C}, or for one mana of any color restricted to a legendary spell, which needs no legendary permanent on the battlefield and so pays for Zuko on turn one; once you do control one (Zuko always qualifies) a third ability taps for unrestricted mana of any color among your legends, so it fixes the two-color curve. For {3}, a tap, and exiling the land itself it also gives a legendary creature hexproof and indestructible until end of turn, a one-shot shield that costs you the land.
• 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. 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} you choose any number of permanents and players that already have counters and give each another counter of each kind, so it adds a +1/+1 to every creature an anthem or Cathars’ Crusade has already grown, adds a loyalty counter to Elspeth, and advances the charge counters on Evendo, Waking Haven toward its 12-counter unlock. Proliferate chooses any number of permanents and players, so it also adds a quest counter to Beastmaster Ascension, relevant on a turn you attack with fewer than seven, and an energy counter to you for Guide of Souls. It both pumps the board and feeds Sphere Grid.
• 34 lands, and Nykthos was the cut. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx came out for Roaming Throne, and it was the correct land to lose here: devotion counts mana symbols in the mana costs of permanents you control, and tokens have no mana cost, so a board of twenty-plus Rabbits added exactly zero to it. The payout came off the handful of nontoken permanents instead, a modest topper in a deck whose whole plan is tokens. The land mana that DOES read a wide board is all still here. Gaea’s Cradle counts creatures, tokens included, and Evendo, Waking Haven reads that same board once it is stationed to twelve: station taps another untapped creature you control at sorcery speed and puts charge counters equal to that creature’s power on the land, and at 12 or more counters it unlocks {G}, {T}: Add {G} for each creature you control. Tapping the Rabbit is a cost of the land’s ability and not one of the Rabbit’s own abilities, so summoning-sick tokens can pay it: twelve 1/1s station it in twelve taps, fewer once Cathars’ Crusade counters or an anthem lift their power, and Karn’s Bastion adds another charge counter every time you proliferate. Watch your land drops at 34. The base is one thinner than it was, so if the deck starts stumbling on mana, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx back in over Roaming Throne is the revert.
• 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, an Elspeth 0, and a Karn’s Bastion proliferate all feed it. The draw scales with the counter event: one to two off a Cathars’ Crusade or Township turn, two off every free Germination Practicum recast, a draw equal to Ouroboroid’s power on its combat trigger, and a draw equal to the counters a Bristly Bill doubling adds to a creature, with Doubling Season doubling the counters and the draw with them. 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. With Roaming Throne naming Rabbit, that mass return doubles every enter trigger, so returning six Hares goes from thirty Rabbits to sixty before Ojer Taq and the doublers multiply it further. It doubles as board-wipe insurance, though two things sit outside it: the backup combo, because Karmic Guide and Reveillark are both mana value 5, over the spell’s limit of 2, and Roaming Throne itself at mana value 4, so a wipe that took the Throne means you recast it before the doubled return, not with it.
• 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, and with a counter engine out the wave of enters also fires a fresh round of board-wide counters. With Roaming Throne back on the battlefield naming Rabbit, each returning Hare’s own enter trigger fires twice and the Rabbit burst doubles, the same math as Return to the Ranks above. It is the cleanest answer to a wrath: one card rebuilds the whole swarm.
• The Karmic Guide loop, and the sacrifice order is load-bearing. Karmic Guide (it costs {3}{W}{W}, a 2/2) reads: when this creature enters, return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Reveillark (it costs {4}{W}, a 4/3) reads: when this creature leaves the battlefield, return up to two target creature cards with power 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. Karmic Guide is power 2, so Reveillark can return it; Reveillark is power 4, so it can never return itself. With both on the battlefield and a free outlet out, sacrifice Karmic Guide FIRST so it is already in the graveyard, then sacrifice Reveillark. Reveillark’s leave trigger picks its targets as it goes on the stack, so it can name Karmic Guide plus one more power-2-or-less creature card; it resolves, Karmic Guide returns, and Karmic Guide’s enter trigger returns Reveillark. Board restored, nothing spent. Sacrifice Reveillark first and the line is dead, because Karmic Guide is still on the battlefield and is not a legal target. Both outlets make infinite mana: Phyrexian Altar two of any color per iteration, Ashnod’s Altar four colorless. Every iteration is two creatures entering, so under Cathars’ Crusade the whole board grows without bound; close with a Sphere Grid trample swing. The infinite mana from either loop also opens two shorter kills, with one caveat on color. Ashnod’s Altar makes only colorless mana, so the {G}{G} in Bristly Bill, Spine Sower’s {3}{G}{G} has to come from elsewhere. Phyrexian Altar, or the Squirrel loop’s unbounded Cryptolith Rite mana, is what makes his doubling repeatable to arbitrary size off any single counter on the board. Finale of Devastation at arbitrarily large X hands the whole team +X/+X and haste while fetching Craterhoof Behemoth on top, and its {G}{G} is a one-time cost your lands cover, so colorless loop mana still pays for an arbitrarily large X. With Aura Shards out, the iterations also destroy every artifact and enchantment the table controls, and Guide of Souls turns them into unbounded life and energy. Leave a Hare Apparent in the yard as Reveillark’s second target for an extra enter each time around. Eerie Interlude protects the line mid-assembly. Four tutors reach a creature half and Enlightened Tutor finds either altar, so this is a line you can go get, not one you stumble into. If you stop the loop with Karmic Guide on the battlefield, its echo {3}{W}{W} comes due at your next upkeep.

Mulligans, what to keep

The deck wants a hand that does something every turn off its dense engine. There are no mana dorks in this list. Acceleration is Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Kodama’s Reach, and Smothering Tithe, so a one-land hand with no rock is a ship, not a bridge.

Snap keep

Two or three lands, a token maker, and a doubler or a payoff. That is the hand that does something every turn. Sol Ring or Mana Vault into an early Zuko is ideal, and a white source plus Guide of Souls is the next best start. 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 Karmic Guide loop. It is a slow three-card line, and even with Enlightened Tutor able to find an altar it costs you a whole turn and a draw step, so a Karmic Guide plus Reveillark opener with no board plan is still a trap. Keep for the go-wide engine and let the loops show up later if they do.

Turn plan

Protecting the swarm, best to worst

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

• Aang’s Shelter (the Avatar print of 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.
• 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 and red-based wraths bounce off it. Protection never stops an edict: an edict targets the player, not the creature, so edicts and other sacrifice effects still get through, and 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. Enlightened Tutor finds it.
• Eerie Interlude exiles any number of target creatures you control, not only Hares, and returns them at the beginning of the next end step: out of a wipe, and back for one fresh Rabbit burst. Tokens you blink are gone for good. It also protects a loop mid-assembly.
• Seedborn Muse is indirect protection: she untaps your lands on every opponent’s turn, so holding up Heroic Intervention or Aang’s Shelter stops costing you your own turn.
• The simplest insurance is to hold back one Hare or one protection spell rather than committing every card before you have to.

Common mistakes

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), 1/1 green Squirrels (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl), 1/1 white Soldiers (Elspeth, Storm Slayer), and Treasures (Smothering Tithe). Bring energy counters for Guide of Souls and something to track Elspeth’s loyalty. 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 ten Game Changers, Aura Shards, Enlightened Tutor, Gaea’s Cradle, Mana Vault, Mayor Tong of Chin Village, Seedborn Muse, Smothering Tithe, Survival of the Fittest, Aang’s Shelter, and The One Ring, are all in at Bracket 4.

• This build’s ten swaps. The deck traded six non-Game-Changers for six Game Changers and went from four to ten. Parallel Lives out for Elspeth, Storm Slayer: the same doubling on a permanent that also makes Soldiers, grants the board flying, and kills a creature. Triumph of the Hordes out for Aura Shards: the infect kill line is gone entirely, traded for repeatable artifact and enchantment removal. Beast Within out for Seedborn Muse. Mangara of Corondor out for Smothering Tithe. Grand Abolisher out for Enlightened Tutor. Birds of Paradise out for Kodama’s Reach, which leaves the deck with zero mana dorks by design. Ash Barrens out for Gaea’s Cradle: a colorless land whose only real job was landcycling for a basic becomes the biggest mana source in the deck, and that trade was land for land. Skullclamp out for Survival of the Fittest: the Clamp wanted 1-toughness Rabbits and every anthem in the deck turned it off, so the slot became a repeatable creature tutor that turns spare Hares into fuel. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx out for Roaming Throne: devotion counts the mana symbols in the mana costs of permanents you control (CR 700.5), and a token has no mana cost (CR 111.3), so a board of twenty-plus Rabbits added nothing to the Shrine, while the Throne naming Rabbit doubles every Hare Apparent enter trigger instead; the land count went from 35 to 34. Lightning Greaves moved to the flex box rather than being cut.
• Selesnya Signet: in the sideboard, kept as a flex ramp option. It comes in over Cryptolith Rite against wrath-heavy pods, where a rock survives a board wipe and creature-mana 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.
• Helm of the Host: in the sideboard. Copying a Hare at the start of each of YOUR combats is the slowest of the token engines, and the slot went to Trouble in Pairs for passive multiplayer card advantage. It stays in the box as a flex piece.
• Conclave Mentor: in the box and benched on purpose. It amplifies a counter axis Cathars’ Crusade and Germination Practicum already carry, so it duplicates work the maindeck does better.
• 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.
• 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 is 34 now, comfortable off the artifact fast mana, Kodama’s Reach, 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. Three doublers plus the triple from Ojer Taq already ceiling out at x24 on any one batch, so the fourth-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 and Birds of Paradise: both gone. The deck runs no mana dorks at all now. Acceleration is Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Kodama’s Reach, and Smothering Tithe Treasures, none of which die to a wrath.
• Unbreakable Formation: not a maindeck cut anymore. The maindeck protection slot went to Aang’s Shelter, and Unbreakable Formation moved to the sideboard as a board-wipe answer that also pumps the team.
• Flex box: cards on hand that are legal but did not make the 99, kept as swap fodder: Lightning Greaves (moveable shroud and haste, out of the maindeck as of this build because it guards one creature rather than the team), Crop Rotation, Thought Vessel, Pearl Medallion, Duty Beyond Death, Take Up the Shield, and surplus taplands. Crop Rotation is itself a Game Changer, so sleeving it in takes the deck from ten to eleven and has to be re-disclosed at rule zero.

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 fourteen cards: the seven matchup swaps below (Settle the Wreckage, Authority of the Consuls, Flawless Maneuver, Unbreakable Formation, Return to Dust, Sensei’s Divining Top, Helm of the Host), the two flex ramp options (Selesnya Signet and Burgeoning), Dryad Arbor on the bench, the two flex-box cards (Lightning Greaves and Crop Rotation), and two bench options (Divine Visitation and Conclave Mentor). The box stays at fourteen.