Five Game-Winning Combos for Zimone in the Secrets of Strixhaven Simic Precon

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles just released but I can't stop thinking about Secrets of Strixhaven." That line from A.L. Walser's breakdown on Draftsim captures exactly the kind of brain-worm energy this set has generated in the Commander community. Official spoilers from January revealed the face commanders of all five Secrets of Strixhaven precons, and while every one of them has generated buzz, the Simic entry stopped a lot of players mid-scroll. Zimone, Infinite Analyst, illustrated by Carly Milligan, is the blue-green face commander of the Simic precon, and she comes loaded with the kind of experience-counter and proliferate synergies that combo-minded Simic players dream about. Walser's piece, published March 9, 2026, is written explicitly for players who will buy the precon and want to know what upgrade paths are worth pursuing. These five combo lines are the ones worth building toward.

The Evolution Witness + Inexorable Tide Engine

This is the most intricate line of the five, and Walser flags it immediately: "This combo gets trickier." The setup demands that you control Evolution Witness already carrying a +1/+1 counter and have Inexorable Tide on the battlefield. From there, you also need two creatures that cost X with 0/0 stat lines, like Walking Ballista and Ugin's Conjurant, with at least one of them in hand (the other can start in the graveyard, which makes the line easier to assemble mid-game than it first appears).

The sequence runs like this:

As Walser puts it: "You can keep doing this for infinite storm, infinite proliferate, infinite +1/+1 counters on your creatures, and so on." That list of payoffs is genuinely broad. Infinite storm means any storm card you have in hand becomes a finisher. Infinite proliferate feeds every counter-based win condition in the deck. If Zimone has accumulated experience counters, proliferate accelerates her clock too. The moving pieces are numerous, but the payoff justifies the complexity.

The Zimone Two-Card Infinite-Turn Combo

Zimone herself is one half of a two-card combo that can produce infinite turns. The catch, and Walser is candid about it, is that this line is not a quick one. Reaching the necessary threshold of 5 experience counters takes real time, and the combo is described as easy to interact with along the way. Once the pieces are in place, the loop generates turns without end, but the setup window is long enough that opponents have plenty of opportunities to disrupt it.

There is also a format consideration worth flagging. As Walser writes: "Infinite turns are wonky in a Bracket that asks not to chain turns; I consider this a combo win, but your experience may vary. Just have a good rule 0!" That guidance matters in organized play contexts where certain brackets explicitly restrict chaining extra turns. Before sleeving this line up for a convention side event or a pod with strangers, know your table's expectations. In a playgroup where combo wins are embraced, this functions as a clean, if slow-building, two-card close.

Body of Research + Simic Ascendancy

This pairing sits at the more casual end of the five combos, and Walser frames it that way directly: "This combo brings us towards the more casual spectrum: We're still talking about two cards, but at a far higher cost." The setup is conceptually straightforward. You need Simic Ascendancy already on the battlefield, then cast Body of Research at a point when your library contains 20 or more cards. The threshold of 20 cards is the critical number, and Walser notes that in practice this means "basically any point you have" a functioning library, which is most of the game.

Body of Research dumps a massive pile of +1/+1 counters onto a single creature, and Simic Ascendancy converts that counter accumulation into a win condition through its triggered ability. The mana cost of Body of Research is the limiting factor here: it is expensive to cast, which is why Walser characterizes this as "far higher cost" relative to the tighter, cheaper lines elsewhere in the article. For players who lean toward a big-mana, grind-to-win Simic gameplan rather than an early-loop strategy, this is the combo that fits that style. It is resilient in the sense that neither piece is particularly suspicious on its own, and Simic Ascendancy slots naturally into the kind of +1/+1 counter strategies Zimone already wants to enable.

The Remaining Two Lines

The Draftsim piece covers five combos in total, and two of them sit beyond the source material available here. What is clear from the article's framing is that all five are selected with an explicit upgrade lens, aimed at players taking the Simic precon and pushing its power level upward. The three combos covered above already sketch the range of the deck's combo identity: a complex multi-piece storm loop at one end, a slow but decisive infinite-turn line in the middle, and a high-cost casual finisher on the other. The two additional lines presumably fill out the spectrum further, and Walser also mentions Mathemagics, a newly spoiled card for which the author claims full comprehension of how to resolve, as part of the broader Zimone ecosystem worth exploring.

Playing the Combos at Your Table

The through-line across all five combos is that Zimone rewards patience and counter accumulation. The experience counter threshold of 5 is not trivial to reach, proliferate synergies take a board state to exploit, and even the more casual Body of Research line requires setting up Simic Ascendancy in advance. None of these are turn-three kills. What they are is a coherent web of synergies that rewards players who build deliberately, protect their commander, and understand which pieces enable multiple lines rather than just one.

Walser's explicit recommendation to have "a good rule 0" conversation before bringing infinite turns to the table is worth taking seriously. Zimone's most powerful lines produce effects that some tables embrace and others find frustrating, and a quick conversation before the game starts is what separates a memorable combo win from a ruined evening. With Secrets of Strixhaven releases imminent, there is still time to build smart before the precon hits tables.