It needed to be played at the right time, not to be a suicide, but Necropotence, even with its nothing goes to the graveyard and pay one life to draw a card was the pinnacle of deck building in Ice Age
For example, a Me in the command zone with a +1/+1 counter on it will be 4/4
Unified Front is much stronger, and you can dump as much mana as you can to create X ally tokens and also put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control (including the ones you had before)
Tocasia's Welcome, Welcoming Vampire, and Enduring Innocence cover this space quite well
Obsessive Skinner Dispensing +1/+1 counters each turn can be surprisingly powerful, especially once you chuck in a couple of cards like Pir, Imaginative Rascal or Shalai and Hallar to get more out of the upkeep trigger