Its really the perfect Commander card, as its good with Kindred strategies of any type or color, or good as a way to double up what your Commander does
they're perfect for building decks, playing Limited games with friends, and are tons of fun to open #9
encore makes it hard to remove profitably without exile-based interaction
(In agreement with "it's always been that way" doesn't make it a good thing
The deck then adds powerful mid-game threats including Nael (card filter/draw), Tatyova (transforms your lands into creatures), and elvish hydromancer (creatures creature tokens)
Notably, they trigger each time you discard a card, so if you discard four or five cards, you get that many counters