I printed mine without supports and it worked fine
Embercleave subtly pushes players towards playing Boros over mono-red, with Stoneforge Mystic hanging around to sweeten the pot
Even better, instead of just putting two +1/+1 counters on one of your creatures, she puts two of those counters on all of your creatures
This can come in the form of incidental damage (Sabotender), threat of activation (i.e., an aggro deck that can use Paladin's Arms to trade up its creatures over time), or snowballing incremental advantages from archetype payoffs
While the counter on its own is a one time thing, having this trigger at the beginning of combat and then the ability to get that creature back with haste for that same combat makes a very tight window for opponents to deal with your shenanigans
Of course the late-game bomb is Spine of Ish Sah, which enters the battlefield and destroys a permanent