Best Budget Simic Cards for Commander

Simic is the color combination that draws cards while ramping and then draws more cards because it ramped. Blue and green together do the two most powerful things in commander: generate mana advantage and generate card advantage. The staples for this color pair have been reprinted enough times that building a strong Simic shell costs almost nothing.

Ramp that doesn't need explaining

Cultivate and Kodama's Reach do the same thing. Search for two basics, one to the battlefield tapped, one to hand. You hit your next land drop and you're ahead on mana. Both under a dollar after countless reprints.

Farseek gets any land with a basic land type, which includes shocklands and the Kaldheim snow duals. Searches for Breeding Pool in Simic. $1.15.

Sol Ring is $1.64 and if you're not running it you're wrong. Not a Simic card specifically but it goes in every deck.

Arcane Signet taps for any color in your commander's identity. Forty-six cents. Every deck runs this.

Card draw that green shouldn't have

Green has gotten absurdly good at drawing cards in the last few years. Beast Whisperer draws you a card every time you cast a creature spell. In a creature-heavy deck you're drawing two or three extra cards per turn cycle.

Coiling Oracle enters, reveals the top card, and either puts a land onto the battlefield or draws you the card. A 1/1 for

that replaces itself and sometimes ramps you. Seventeen cents.

Mulldrifter draws two cards when it enters. You can evoke it for

to just draw two and let it die, or pay full price for a 2/2 flyer that drew two. Either mode is good.

Tatyova, Benthic Druid draws a card and gains a life on every landfall trigger. Already covered this in the landfall post but it's worth repeating here because she's also a budget Simic commander and the card is thirty-one cents.

Interaction

Counterspell costs

and counters anything. $1.51 and one of the best cards in the format. Hard to justify running any other two-mana counter over this.

Beast Within destroys any permanent at instant speed for

. Opponent gets a 3/3 beast. Green's version of Generous Gift. Fifty-four cents.

Reality Shift exiles a creature for

and the controller manifests the top card of their library. Exile-based removal in blue for almost nothing. Better than a bounce spell because the creature doesn't come back.

Value creatures

Solemn Simulacrum enters, searches for a basic land. Dies, draws a card. Goes in literally every commander deck that doesn't have a reason not to run it. Twenty-six cents.

Risen Reef triggers off every elemental entering the battlefield. Reveal the top card, land goes to the battlefield, anything else goes to your hand. In an elemental-heavy deck this is disgusting. Even without the tribal synergy it triggers off itself entering.

Kiora's Follower untaps any permanent. Mana rock, land, another creature, whatever you need.

for a 2/2 that does something useful every turn.

The mana base

Simic mana is cheap to build. Command Tower and Arcane Signet are in every deck. Beyond that:

Yavimaya Coast is a painland that taps for colorless free or either color for 1 life. Usually under fifty cents.

Vineglimmer Snarl checks if you have a forest or island in hand and enters untapped if you do. Budget dual that works.

Botanical Sanctum enters untapped if you control two or fewer other lands, which covers your first three turns when it matters most.

You don't need Tropical Island or Misty Rainforest. A Simic mana base built from budget duals and basics works fine.

Putting it together

The Simic shell is ramp, draw, interact, repeat. Green finds lands. Blue draws cards and says no to things. Together they build an engine that's hard to out-resource. And because both colors have been in every set since the game started, the reprints keep prices low.

Build your Simic deck on GrimDeck.