We're back with another EDHREC Sunday Stream, where we've brewed another budget deck, this time around Xavier Sal, Infested Captain, your One-Stop Token-Counter Conversion Shop.

Xavier Sal, Infested Captain

Archidekt Link

This week, Jason and I ventured yet again into uncommon territory, this time the swamps (and islands and forests) of Sultai. Xavier has two tap abilities.

The first allows you to remove a counter (of any variety) in order to Populate, which means we create a copy of a creature token we control.

The second ability allows you to sacrifice a creature (either token or non-token) in order to Proliferate, which lets us add a counter of any type to any permanent on the board which that permanent already has. In short, Xavier turns counters into creatures, and creatures into counters.

So which direction is better to go? Tokens and counters are both strong strategies on their own, but we wanted to use Sagas to generate lots of passive value while we sacrifice those lore counters to Populate, triggering a Saga chapter again and letting us make another creature token.

We also have the option to sacrifice a creature to add a lore counter to every saga we have, letting us turbo through all of those chapter abilities and get our value back even faster. This deck ideally would function similarly to many Tom Bombadil decks which add and remove lore counters at will to get outrageous value out of Sagas.

The Sagas

Binding the Old Gods is one of the strongest Sagas in the game, solves a lot of problems for us. The first chapter destroys any nonland permanent an opponent controls, which is obviously useful. The second chapter allows us to search for any forest and put it on the battlefield.

If we can remove a counter from Binding right after our ramp effect resolves, we can go right back to the first chapter and do it all again. The Huntsman's Redemption is another great ramp-based Saga that goes in this deck and behaves similarly to Binding when we can remove counters from it.

Vault 87: Forced Evolution is a genre of Saga that plays nicely in decks that can remove lore counters, because it allows you to keep it on the board and keep that stolen creature for much longer than you ordinarily would be able to. The Phasing of Zhalfir is another Saga in this vein that we can exploit.

If you've followed this stream for very long, you know that we love stealing other people's stuff. King Narfi's Betrayal and The Trickster-God's Heist both let us do silly things that give us access to cards and creatures from our opponents' libraries.

Song of Eärendil and Song of Freyalise are both huge value pieces that can help us keep our gameplan moving along via ramp and card draw, even if we aren't able to pull lore counters off of them.

Speaking of...

Removing Counters

Goldberry, River-Daughter is functionally a duplicate of Xavier, but she doesn't need to sacrifice a creature to make it work. Getting her on the board may be even more valuable than Xavier himself.

Clockspinning is a repeatable instant with Buyback that allows us to remove counters from permanents and suspended cards. This is a great backup in case we don't have any creatures on board.

While it can't put counters on permanents, Thrull Parasite can remove them for the low cost of two life.

Chisei, Heart of Oceans is another trigger that happens each turn which will allow us to remove any type of counter.

Counter Payoffs

Master Biomancer is a classic Simic +1/+1 counter piece that makes everything on the board better just because they're entering the battlefield.

Gruff Triplets is a bit of a cult classic for the Sunday Stream, and it feels almost tailor-made for this deck. It automatically creates two copies of itself on entering, which are tokens that can be populated.

If we sacrifice one of those tokens to Xavier, every other copy of Gruff Triplets gets +1/+1 counters equal to the power of the one that died. I'm sure you can figure out the cycle here.

Herd Baloth has the potential to make tons of 4/4 Beast tokens will getting very large itself. We can either use those as beaters, or as fodder for Xavier.

Scurry Oak is a classic combo piece and this deck might be the first time this card has ever been used without an infinite combo in mind. Like Herd Baloth, this will generate lots of tokens to use as fodder for Xavier.

Battles

Battles?!? Absolutely. Some battles have very solid Enters effects and can flip into a powerful creature or enchantment, and we can remove counters from them without even attacking.

Invasion of Arcavios has an ETB effect that lets us search any zone for an instant or sorcery and put it in our hand, then flips into an enchantment that lets us copy instants and sorceries.

Invasion of Fiora has an asymmetric board wipe as an ETB, then flips into Marchesa, Resolute Monarch, which can remove all of the counters from a permanent when she attacks, allows us to reset a Saga or flip another battle.

Invasion of Segovia is one of the strongest Battles and has an ETB that creates two tokens, and flips into a creature that lets us untap four creatures on our end step and gives all of our noncreature spells convoke, which is very strong in a deck that wants to create tokens.

Invasion of Shandalar's ETB lets us put three permanents from our graveyard back into our hand, and flips into an enchantment that returns one permanent from a graveyard into your hand every turn.

Populate Targets

Jyoti, Moag Ancient creates a 1/1 Forest Dryad on Enter, which is essentially a land that we can make copies of. We'd love to make lots of copies of this.

Splash Lasher's ETB taps an opponent's creature and gives it a stun counter, which prevents it from untapping. The Offspring mechanic allows us to make a token copy, which could be Populated, and those stun counters can be Proliferated.

Tender Wildguide is an any-color mana dork with that same Offspring mechanic, allowing us to create more and more mana dorks with our Populate ability. As a side bonus, Tender Wildguide can also tap to put a counter on a creature.

Irenicus's Vile Duplication makes a token copy of any creature you control, which will allow us to get token copies of creatures that we wouldn't ordinarily have access to.

While I'm not going to list it in its own section, this a Sunday Stream deck, which means that it gets a Mimic Vatif there's any possible way to justify it. Mimic Vat obviously makes token copies of the creature exiled with it and those can be Populated, which is clearly powerful.

Closing Sumarrrrrrrry

Oh, you thought you were getting through this whole article without a pirate pun? You fool. Anyways, this deck has the potential to take some very interesting synergy and turn it into a win via lots of accumulated value over the course of the game rather than through any one explosive turn. However, if you're able to acquire a large number of Gruff Triplets, your opponents could be entering choppy seas.

Levi Stevenson

Since first dipping his toes into Commander a a few years ago, Levi has consistently made a point to avoid making a whole bunch of the same kind of deck by brewing lots of different color combinations, only to discover that he just has token decks in almost every color combination. When not playing or talking about Magic, you can find him playing drums in a cover band, writing and talking about Iowa State athletics, or embarrassing his wife in public with outrageously dumb jokes.