Think about how much damage that'll prevent
It was designed to work with temporary clone effects like Splinter Twin and Flameshadow Conjuring, which makes for a unique and powerful commander, though one that's balanced out by being a measly 4/3 for six mana
Sometimes, if your whole board is built out with lots of counters, you can Proliferate three times to just win the game
In addition to that, whenever you deal combat damage to a player with one or more creatures, you get to exile that player's top card face down and cast it while it remains exiled
The Grand Strategist ability will buff one of your artifact creatures and provide them with evasion in the form of menace
But there's still an ETB effect that happens when that creature hits the board, and thats a triggered ability