Preconstructed Magic: The Gathering Commander decks are a great place to start if you’re not looking to brew an entire deck around a new legendary creature. These decks come loaded with spells to compliment your commander, a respectable land package, and a good amount of completely new cards to surprise your opponents with.

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Even if you like most of the cards included in the preconstructed deck, there will be those cards you’ll want to swap out. With the Call for Backup deck, there are tons of great counter-based strategies to upgrade your deck with that won’t break the bank.

10 Rhythm Of The Wild

The Call for Backup deck already includes an enchantment that grants all your creatures riot, but doubling up on this effect is always good. Riot gives you a choice for creatures that are entering the battlefield, you can either put a +1/+1 counter on it or that creature can gain haste for the turn, letting it attack as soon as it is in play.

As a bonus, Rhythm of the Wild also makes it so your creature spells cannot be countered, letting you safely play whatever creature you want during your turn despite what any blue-playing opponent might have to say about it.

9 Evolution Sage

Evolution Sage by Simon Dominic

Putting your lands to work is something that every player should want to do and with Evolution Sage, you can, especially in the Call for Backup deck. Evolution Sage’s landfall ability turns every land that enters the battlefield under your control into a proliferation trigger, upping the number of counters of each kind on whatever permanents or players you choose.

Evolution Sage is an odd card to play sometimes, play it too early, and you won’t have any cards to proliferate your counters on. If you wait too long, you might not have enough lands to reliably trigger its ability.

It's also a fairly big target, so make sure you have at least a land or two in hand and a few counters to add to.

8 Mayael's Aria

This enchantment works in layers, adding +1/+1 counters to all your creatures and scaling up from there. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have a creature with five or more power, Mayael’s Aria distributes a +1/+1 counter to each creature you control.

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Then, if you have a creature with a power of ten or more, you gain ten life. Finally, Mayael’s Aria provides you an alternate win condition too, giving you an automatic win if you control a creature with power twenty or more. While it might not happen often, you can reliably get at least the first stage down with little effort making it a solid addition to your deck.

7 Damning Verdict

In creature-heavy decks, a board wipe can sometimes be just as devastating to you as it is to your opponents. A board wipe that affects everyone else, however, can be a powerful addition to your deck.

Daming Verdict affects only creatures without any counters on them, letting you keep any creatures you’ve committed counters to and destroying everything else.

It’s always good to have a mass removal spell or two on hand, just in case an opponent starts to spiral out of control. Daming Verdict can also be used to swing out against an opponent to take them out of the game, removing all or most of their blockers so you can attack with abandon.

6 Halana And Alena, Partners

One of the better ways to repeatedly load your creatures up with counters outside Halana and Alena, Partners.

At the start of combat on your turn you can give another creature you control +1/+1 counters equal to Halana and Alena’s power, which starts at two normally. The larger you make Halana and Alena, the more counters you can dish out.

There’s even an often overlooked bonus effect from Halana and Alena and that is that they give the create you target haste as well as the counters. Being able to cast a creature, move to combat, pump that creature up, and then attack with it all in the same turn is a powerful move.

5 Defiler Of Vigor

A sort of green creature lord, Defiler of Vigor lets you pay life instead of spending green mana on green permanent spells you cast. Even if you don’t pay the life for your green permanents, every time you cast one you get to put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.

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It’s important to keep in mind that you can only pay the two life once for one green mana requirement. So if a spell requires two green mana, and you can’t pay for it, you won’t be able to pay four life for both green mana requirements.

4 Beast Whisperer

Card draw is something that the Call for Backup deck desperately needs and with Beast Whisperer, you can fulfill that weak spot a bit.

Beast Whisperer is fairly straightforward for a Magic card, every time you cast a creature spell, you get to draw a card. Even if that spell is countered, you still get to draw your card.

Beast Whisperer turns all your creature spells into cantrips, replacing itself in your hand as soon as you cast your creature. Don’t be surprised if your Beast Whisperer is the target of immediate removal by your opponents, however, since they won’t want you to draw too many cards.

3 Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion

Many of the best cards that duplicate counters when they’re added to permanents you control are wildly outside what any player would consider reasonable, which is what makes Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion a great addition to the Call for Backup deck.

If you put a counter would be put on a creature, planeswalker, or yourself, you add that many counters plus one instead while Lae'zel is out. The downside is that since Lae'zel is a creature, it is among the easiest card types to destroy in Magic, but even so, upgrading all your counter effects is a powerful effect in your deck.

2 Avenger Of Zendikar

Another landfall-focused creature, Avenger of Zendikar can be a one-card army when played under the right conditions. The Avenger of Zendikar creates weak little 0/1 Plant tokens equal to the number of lands you control, and then, every time a land comes into play under your control, all your Plant tokens gain a +1/+1 counter.

If left alone by your opponents, a single Avenger of Zendikar and a few lands coming into play can quickly turn your board into an overwhelming force.

1 Hardened Scales

There’s one card that should be an easy inclusion in your Call for Backup deck and that is Hardened Scales. This one-mana enchantment can come down early and turns all your counter strategies up a notch.

When a +1/+1 counter would be added to a creature you control, add another counter to it as well. The effect is very similar to Lae'zel’s ability, but since it's an enchantment and can come down as soon as your first turn, it is one of the best versions of that effect.

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