Experimental Augury

Impulse with a proliferate rider bolted onto the back, and it is the second clause that pays for a slot in a counters deck. The dig itself is well-worn: look at three, take one, bury the rest. What makes the pairing matter is that both halves resolve on a single cast, so smoothing a draw and nudging your board forward collapse into one action instead of two separate spells. Planeswalker loyalty, +1/+1 and charge counters, poison markers on an opponent: whatever is sitting on the battlefield ticks up while you dig. That answers a familiar deckbuilding friction. Card selection is a slot most decks resent spending, and proliferate usually asks for a dedicated enabler, so folding both jobs into one cast means neither half reads as a tax on the other. Proliferate does not target, so choosing any number of permanents and players lets it advance counters through hexproof or shroud, and choosing none leaves a plain two-mana dig with nothing lost on the downgrade. It wants a board with at least one thing worth pushing. Because the whole thing is an instant, you can sit on it until an end step, or fold the proliferate into a moment when the extra counter suddenly matters, treating the card selection as the reason you were holding up mana in the first place.