Proliferate: what it does and what you can proliferate
Proliferate adds one more of each kind of counter to any permanents and players you pick. How it works, what you can and can't proliferate, and the tricks Commander players use it for.
In this article
Proliferate is one of the most played keyword actions in Commander, mostly because of one card: Atraxa, Praetors' Voice. It’s simple once you see it, but it has a couple of rules people still get wrong.
What proliferate does
Rule 701.34a of the Comprehensive Rules:
To proliferate means to choose any number of permanents and/or players that have a counter, then give each one additional counter of each kind that permanent or player already has.
In practice:
- Look at everything on the battlefield and every player that has at least one counter.
- Choose any of them. All of them, some, or none.
- Each one you chose gets one more of every kind of counter it has.
You choose who gets counters
This is the part that makes proliferate good. You never have to help an opponent. Your +1/+1 counters go up, your planeswalker gets loyalty, your opponents’ poison goes up, and the opponent’s planeswalker stays exactly where it was.
Every kind, not one kind
Before War of the Spark (2019), proliferate let you pick one kind of counter per permanent. It doesn’t anymore. If you choose a creature with a +1/+1 counter and a stun counter, it gets one of each. If you don’t want the stun counter, you leave the whole creature out.
What you can proliferate
| Counter | On | What proliferating it does |
|---|---|---|
| +1/+1 | Creatures | Grows them by +1/+1 |
| Loyalty | Planeswalkers | One more loyalty, so one step closer to an ultimate |
| Lore | Sagas | Triggers the next chapter right away |
| Poison | Players | Pushes opponents toward 10 poison |
| Energy | Players | One more energy to spend |
| Experience | Players | Grows experience commanders like Meren or Mizzix |
| Rad | Players | One more card milled at their precombat main phase |
| Oil | Artifacts, creatures | Powers up Phyrexian oil cards |
| Time | Permanents with vanishing or impending | Delays them by a turn (usually not what you want) |
| Defense | Battles | Makes a battle harder to defeat |
| Shield, stun, -1/-1 | Permanents | Usually you leave these out on your own stuff |
What you can’t proliferate
- Commander tax. It’s a cost, not a counter.
- Commander damage. It’s a running total the game keeps, not counters on you.
- The monarch and the initiative. They’re designations, not counters. See how the monarch works.
- Speed. Speed from “Start your engines!” is a value a player has, not a counter.
- Anything with no counters yet. Proliferate only adds more of what’s already there.
Common proliferate cards
- Atraxa, Praetors' Voice. Proliferates at the beginning of your end step, every turn. The reason most people know the word.
- Tezzeret's Gambit. Draw two cards, then proliferate. You can pay 2 life instead of the blue mana, but in Commander it still needs blue in your color identity.
- Evolution Sage. Proliferate whenever a land enters under your control.
- Flux Channeler. Proliferate whenever you cast a noncreature spell.
Small rules worth knowing
- +1/+1 and -1/-1 cancel out. If a creature ends up with both, they’re removed in pairs (rule 704.5q), so a creature never keeps both kinds at once.
- Sagas trigger immediately. A lore counter from proliferate triggers that chapter on the spot, not on your next precombat main phase.
- Two-Headed Giant poison. The team shares poison counters, so only one player on a team can get the extra one.
Tracking it all
Proliferate turns are hard on dice. Five players with poison, energy and experience means a lot of separate numbers going up at once.
Lotus tracks poison, energy, experience and rad for every player, alongside life and commander damage. When you proliferate, each counter goes up with one tap.
