With Christmas just past and more Commander products on the horizon, now seems like an ideal time to discuss the process of upgrading the preconstructed deck you have just purchased or been given. Here I will outline a general procedure for doing so and use a poor, innocent Primal Genesis deck as our victim (example). Deck lists for the original Primal Genesis and the upgraded version are at the end.
Step 1: Pick your Commander
Magic precons usually have a couple of generals included. Primal Genesis has three: Ghired, Conclave Exile
. The problem is the generals included often have different strategies suited to them. Ghired has the feel of a token-based strategy. Atla wants a deck filled with big, dumb, little kid creatures to get with your eggs and Marisi is ... included to be a third general. The main choice here is between Ghired and Atla. This will determine a direction for almost all of the rest of the upgrades. Looking at the two of them I feel that it is obviously time to break some eggs.
Precon mana is awful. The colors are usually fine but there tend to be too many lands coming into play tapped or with simple, cheap replacements that would work better. Another issue is lands are often tossed in a precon to satisfy the need for a reprint, but it's only mediocre for deck. Upgrades here have an enormous impact on the playability and enjoyment of your deck.
As you work your way through the other steps, you will want to revisit this step repeatedly. Looking at Primal Genesis, it has 12 lands that come into play tapped (here I'm counting Terramorphic Expanse
). Having almost a third of your lands coming into play tapped is too slow. Many games this will put you a turn behind everyone mana development-wise. One of the first upgrades should be to cut almost all of the come into play tapped lands and make better choices. Terramorphic Expanse
feels like it is included more for reprint value than for the deck. Gargoyle Castle
is sub-optimal even in a pure token strategy. With lots of eggs, it's terrible. Myriad Landscape
is a nice land, but since it only grabs two of the same basic land, it doesn't have as much of a place in a three color deck. I have no idea why Rogue's Passage
lands (unless you have some strategy to specifically take advantage of them), so these get cut. Even though Jungle Shrine
also comes into play tapped it can stay because getting all three colors of mana we need is probably worth accepting our fourth comes-into-play-tapped land.
Step 3: Look at your strategy (remove what doesn't fit)
For this step, you need to look at what parts of the precon support the strategy you have opted for. See what plays well with your general and what doesn't. With Atla, the plan is to make eggs to sacrifice to get big creatures into play cheaply (and hopefully at instant speed). This means that most of the creatures in the precon are on their way out. You want to get the most out of every egg you crack.
A creature either needs to do something exciting or be huge (or hopefully both). Feldon of the Third Path
gets to stay. He works well with the big creature plan since he can pull them out of the graveyard. It may sound a little strange but Sakura-Tribe Elder
gets the axe. He isn't amazing enough to get out of an egg and we have other non-creature mana acceleration options that won't dilute our egg cracking chances. Desolation Twin
goes because he makes his copy on cast not upon coming into play. That will also keep us away from most of the other Eldrazi. Roc Egg
is one of four actual eggs legal for us to play, along with Rukh Egg
for us - it was errata'd to Lizard Egg because of reasons?). This feels like it falls in the area of being too "cute" but the Roc and Dragon eggs are both pretty inexpensive to cast and Summoner's Egg
has the potential to get an expensive creature stuck in our hand into play. Giant Adephage
might seem like it should stay based on the size, but it really just ends up being a plain vanilla 7/7 creature if you aren't doing any token doubling. Rampaging Baloths
What can you add that contributes to your chosen strategy? In the case of Primal Genesis it's time for the monsters. I feel like the first creature to add kind of has to be Nesting Dragon
, which checks all the boxes. It's a little kid creature and it makes eggs. Since we are talking about the egg theme, I think a few good changelings are in order. Chameleon Colossus
works as a big monster and will help us use any expensive creatures trapped in hand. Dragonlord Dromoka
may seem like a little bit of an odd choice, but he is big enough to be worth it and very disruptive to your opponents while also being quite castable from your hand. Avacyn, Angel of Hope
You will want to repeat steps 2 and 3 looking at the rest of the deck. It may have become obvious by now looking at Primal Genesis that the deck was more token based than egg based. Ghired's Belligerence
further illustrate this. Lots of populate and tokens. This isn't bad but could have been far better if we went in a different direction with Ghired, Conclave Exile
as the general. We could have leaned into the token generation by adding Parallel Lives
. Since there are only eggs being made, the populate cards can be replaced with either better versions or different cards altogether. To help with mana, these can come out for Kodama's Reach
. I would rather have definite any color mana instead of maybe an extra land drop (if you have the land) and a card draw. Make sure to put the Fertile Ground
on a basic land if you can to make it a little harder to get 2-for-1'ed. I would prefer more versatility than Phyrexian Rebirth
is a trap. I've tried to play this card multiple times and every time it has felt clunky and bad. It seems like it should be good being a cantrip, but it really isn't. Naya Charm
is ok but awfully situational. If I am going with this kind of charm, I'd rather have Rith's Charm
. Either way, neither makes the cut. Same with the other token/populate instants. Better options exist after taking a look at the rest of the deck.
as well because we don't want to pay the absurd costs for our big creatures that might get imprinted. Mimic Vat
is a definite keep. Even without any token manipulation, this card can be amazingly disruptive to a game and other people's strategies. It kills a lot of graveyard combos if you imprint a critical creature they need to cycle and keep it on the vat. All the enchantments can go. Once again, we can do better for our strategy. Garruk, Primal Hunter
Now that we've figured out everything that doesn't fit our strategy, time to fill in with things that do. Since we need eggs to die, we will want some sacrifice outlets. Goblin Bombardment
help with this. With the sacrificing for mana options we've added, I feel like an Avenger of Zendikar
is a good include now. It was good before, but it seems like almost every green EDH deck is packing one. I was trying for extra variety, but you can't argue with the power of the card in Commander. Altar of Bone
seems like a fun choice. This will probably come out later, but I want to give it a shot. High Market
is another option for saccing eggs, and it works toward fixing our land deficit from earlier. Samut, Voice of Dissent
gives our big creatures haste and untaps Atla for an extra egg if we have nothing more exciting to do. Arcane Signet
lets us pick up a little extra mana and mana fixing. Sylvan Library
helps us take extra advantage of being able to set up the top of our deck. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
is an idea, but I think there are too many legendary creatures in the deck to use him to his fullest advantage. He is also much more fun with token doublers.
both make pretty solid finishers if you need to push through damage. The choice here is largely determined by how your playgroup feels about poison. To be safe, I will go with the Stampede. Aura Shards
can go a long way to solving random problems that might pop up. At this point, we can finish things up with some basic lands and a Wayfarer's Bauble
Wow. That seemed like a lot. Odds are you won't make the modifications to a precon like I did above all at once. Building and updating an EDH deck is an ongoing process. You will go through the steps over and over again during the life of the deck. Sometimes you may even go all the way back to step one and swap generals.
I hope this article will help with upgrading and modifying the next precon you run across or maybe inspire you to pick up Primal Genesis and go the other way, populating as you go.
