Edge of Eternities releases on August 1st. In addition to the main set, there are also two great new Commander precons with lots of intriguing new cards. In this article, I’m going to review the Counter Intelligence precon and discuss the best ways to upgrade it.

The Counter Intelligence deck has a Jeskai identity and is focused on putting counters on Artifacts and generating tons of value when you do. While we’ve seen lots of counter decks and artifact decks in the past, this one is unique because of its focus on charge counters in particular.

THE COMMANDERS

The deck comes with two brand new legendary creatures, both of whom work great as the Commander for the deck. In case you missed it, with the release of Edge of Eternities, Legendary Vehicles and Spacecraft can now be Commanders. That’s good news, because Inspirit, Flagship Vessel makes for an excellent Commander in any counter deck.

While it takes a little bit of work for it to become a creature, even just getting one charge counter on it via Station (or other means), turns into a counter-producing engine. While it’s a little sad it can’t put charge counters on itself, it’s ability to give you counters at the beginning of combat can have a very real impact on your turn. And, once it gets up to 8 charge counters, it becomes a frightening creature that makes all of your artifacts incredibly resilient.

Meanwhile, Kilo comes with one of the most powerful abilities for any counter deck – Proliferate. He does this for you any time he becomes tapped, and because he has Haste, he can become tapped immediately. Of course, in this deck, he doesn’t even need Haste to do that since you can just use the Robot Artificer to Station your Spacecraft.

I wouldn’t really fault anyone for choosing either of these Commanders, as they are both incredibly powerful and highly synergistic with this deck’s gameplan. Kilo is better once you’ve populated the board with counters, while Inspirit is better at getting your board started with a whole bunch of counters. 

Ultimately, I think that’s precisely what makes Inspirit the better Commander. It can get the ball rolling on counters in a big way, unlike Kilo. And it even comes with a built-in way to put counters on itself via Station. Plus, this is the space set! Rolling with a spacecraft Commander has got to be the right thing to do.

NEW CARD HIGHLIGHTS

In addition to the two new legendary creatures, this Commander precon also contains 10 other brand new cards. I’m going to highlight the cards that I think work the best in the deck, and/or the cards that I think are the most likely to impact the Commander format more broadly.

Let’s start with a couple of very powerful Blue charge counter-loving Artifacts. Insight Engine’s name is on point, because it’s an insanely strong value engine in this deck. Paying 2 generic mana to draw one card isn’t going to feel amazing, but things very quickly snowball from there. Even just drawing two cards with this will feel good, and between its own ability to amass charge counters and all the other ways to put counters on it in this deck, it can give you insurmountable card advantage.

Uthros Research Craft also draws you a ton of cards. Once it has 3 or more charge counters, it starts drawing you a card and gaining a charge counter for every Artifact spell you cast, and this deck has plenty of those. Once you get to 12+ counters, it can turn into a win condition, which is great upside to have. But I think most of its value comes from the tons of cards it draws you.

Surge Conductor and Patrolling Peacemaker can both go pretty crazy with Proliferate. Surge Conductor does it any time a nontoken artifact enters under your control, and the Peacemaker does it any time your opponent commits a crime. These are both things that are going to happen all the time in a typical game of Magic. You have more control over when it happens with the Conductor, but keep in mind the Peacemaker doesn’t care who the crime is committed against, so you’re going to be able to get multiple Proliferate triggers during most turn cycles.

This deck also features a pair of interesting counter-loving Artifacts. Moxite Refinery effectively lets you move charge counters around or convert them into +1/+1 counters. This ability is definitely a little bit narrow, but if you’ve got a ton of counters on one of your permanents, this can alter the board in a big way.

Solar Array gives us a new Manalith variant, but this one comes with the major upside of getting artifact spells sunburst. This will mean they enter with extra +1/+1 counters when they are creatures, and charge counters when they aren’t. Solar Array is a mana rock that will be useful in just about any Artifact Commander deck, but it’s really well-suited to this one.

Lastly, I’d like to highlight the pair of new lands in the deck, which are going to be incredibly useful in virtually any Commander deck. Both of them come with basic land types, which makes them very easy to search up with fetches. Cycling on the Massif means you can get rid of it when you’re flooding out – or that it can work nicely with various discard and cycling synergies more broadly. Meanwhile, Radiant Summit will often enter untapped in the mid-game, and that’s not something most dual lands can do.

$50 UPGRADES

While the precon is definitely quite powerful without making any alterations, there are some changes you can make to the deck to make it even stronger. These changes look to give the deck even more artifacts that interact nicely with counters. This way, you’re upping the deck’s artifact and counter synergy at the same time.

This deck has tons of great reprints in it for counter decks , so it’s tough to complain too much – but I was really shocked that neither Energy Chamber nor Power Conduit made it into the deck. Both of them are two of the original charge counter cards. Energy Chamber gives you a counter every upkeep, and Power Conduit is kind of like Moxite Refinery, but on a smaller scale.

Ratchet Bomb and Magistrate’s Scepter both have super powerful effects, provided you can get enough charge counters on them. In this deck, that’s really not a huge ask. Ratchet Bomb is a sweeper that can take down more expensive things the more counters it has, and Magistrate’s Scepter is a potentially repeatable Time Walk effect. 

Both of them are generally too slow to be great in most decks, but this one has enough Proliferate and other ways to put counters on things that you should be able to have a big pile of counters on both of them without too much trouble.

Lost Jitte and Reckoner Bankbuster give you two more artifacts that can turn charge counters into powerful effects. Lost Jitte can even use Charge counters to put +1/+1 counters on creature, giving it an additional layer of synergy. Reckoner Bankbuster, meanwhile, can use charge counters to draw you cards. It spits out a treasure and a 1/1 when it runs out of counters, and you can make that happen every turn in this deck.

Coalition Relic is a mana rock that can really thrive when you put multiple counters on it in a turn, since it removes them all every upkeep and spits out mana. Inexorable Tide is the one non-artifact upgrade in this section, but it’s so good at Proliferating that it definitely deserves to be here.

Here are the 8 cards I removed to make room for these:

Etched Oracle
Mindless Automaton
Experimental Augury
Soul-Guide Lantern
Golem Foundry
Titan Forge
Thirst for Knowledge
Mountain

Here’s the decklist where I made these changes.

FURTHER UPGRADES

While the upgrades in the section above a great way to power up the deck, there are some other cards that will greatly benefit the deck that’ll set you back a little bit more.

Filigree Vector was pretty much made for this deck. It spits out a ton of counters when it enters and can give up artifacts to Proliferate. There’s probably not a card out there that is more well-suited to this deck.

Sword of Truth and Justice’s combat damage trigger gives you a +1/+1 counter and Proliferates, allowing you to quickly augment your board while also buffing and protecting your creature from many opponents.

Uthros might not be an artifact, but it’s part of the Planet cycle in the main set, and that means it gets better when you put on charge counters. And in this case, once you have enough of them, it turns into Tolarian Academy. It’s mana production will allow you to do some absurd things by the later stage of the game.

One of the downsides of counter decks is often that if your opponent kills your creatures, it undoes all the work you did to put counters on your board. But, that’s where The Ozolith comes in. It allows you to store counters from your fallen creatures, and then move counters to something else.

I mentioned Lost Jitte above, but the original Jitte is also pretty good in this deck. It gains more charge counters and can generally too more powerful things with them. However, Lost Jitte may actually be slightly better in this deck because it also produces +1/+1 counters.

ADDING GAME CHANGERS

The Bracket System was introduced earlier this year. It’s a way of judging the power of Commander decks. A big part of this system is the use of a list of “Game Changer” cards which only more competitive decks in brackets 3 and above can play.

If you’re playing in one of those higher brackets, there are 3 Game Changers that I recommend prioritizing for this deck. 

While it doesn’t use Charge counters, The One Ring is an artifact that draws you cards and it gets better the more counters you put on it. This means all the proliferate in this deck can allow you to put tons of burden counters on it and rip through your deck.

Smothering Tithe is a great way to ramp your mana and frustrate your opponents, and while it’s good in just about any White deck, this deck can leverage those artifact tokens into even more value than most.

Urza, Lord High Artificer is a great Artifact payoff. Not only does he make a token that will usually be huge in this deck, he allows your artifacts to produce mana, and has a mana sink ability that you can use all of that mana on. He can build you some pretty insane advantages in most games.

END STEP

Counter Intelligence is a pretty sweet deck. Going crazy with charge counters is a unique way to go about winning in Commander, and this deck can definitely do it. What do you think of the precon? Are there any upgrades you’d make? Let me know over on X or Bluesky.