I’ve already started writing next week’s article before I write this one. It’s titled, the first few paragraphs are written, and I have a premise that I’m excited about. Unfortunately, I need to do more research for that article, so I need to push it back a week and write this week’s article on something else.
That puts me an in an interesting position. I know that next week’s article is on an alternate format (and yes, I dropped that as a teaser), and the last two week’s were going over a large Highlander Five-Color deck called The Essentials. Therefore, I am in an interesting position. I can try to find an article in between these topics that is thematically different. That way, you don’t get too bored as an audience.
A while ago, I wrote one of my first articles on the topic of preconstructed decks. In that article, I stated that recent precons had really disappointed me, because they largely displayed bland deckbuilding skills. Sometimes they featured a keyword or mechanic that was relatively boring (Sunburst precon being one of the drabbest), and sometimes they did the same thing over and over again (witness the large number of spirit decks in Kamigawa block, or the large number of Green Beats with Fatties decks they’ve built over the years).
Then Planar Chaos was printed and I found a good precon! Then I found another! And finally a third! In fact, I’d claim that three of the four Planar Chaos preconstructed decks are pretty solid.
If you’ve played all four precons, you probably know which one is the odd man out. Ixidor’s Legacy is lousy. It’s a mono-Blue deck with a lot of tricks that are underwhelming and no real control beyond the limited creature control cards that Planar Chaos featured. There’s no counter magic, little card drawing, and poor creatures hogging up most of the space of the deck. Ixidor’s Legacy gets a big ol’ “Ick” from me. (If I were a certain pun-loving Wizards employee, I’d call it Ick-idor’s Legacy. Luckily for all of us, that I am not said person.)
That leaves three great precons. I’ve been playing with them at our casual Magic gaming night here are Abe’s Hacienda, so I have a lot of experience with each. Today, what I am going to do is write about each precon, how they play, and what changes I would make to each if I did that sort of thing. Let’s do these precons in order from my third favorite to my most favorite.
The Equinaut Precon… er… Endless March
If you have played Endless March and you are a frequent reader of this column, then you might wonder if I would notice that Wizards printed a version of Equinaut for their precon. For those of you unfamiliar with Equinaut, allow me to point you thusly.
Everybody else probably knows what Equinaut is, because I’ve mentioned it several times throughout the history of my column.
However, you may not know what Endless March is. Allow me to post the decklist for Endless March here.
1 Keldon Marauders
2 Mogg War Marshal
2 Lavacore Elemental
1 Avalanche Riders
1 Children of Korlis
2 Icatian Javelineers
2 Errant Doomsayers
3 Whitemane Lion
1 Soltari Priest
3 Aven Riftwatcher
2 Stonecloaker
1 Riftmarked Knight
2 Calciderm
1 Dust Elemental
2 Stormfront Riders
2 Jhoira’s Timebug
2 Brute Force
1 Fatal Frenzy
2 Timecrafting
1 Dead / Gone
1 Sunlance
1 Dawn Charm
10 Mountain
11 Plains
3 Terramorphic Expanse
Okay, let’s take a look at the deck, and what it is trying to do.
You’ll note that the deck plays a few of the new Time Spiral gating creatures. 3 Lions, 2 Riders, 2 ‘Cloakers, and a Dusty. That’s 8 creatures dedicated to bouncing back your stuff. You should, ideally, have some good stuff to bounce back as a result.
This deck also has a few vanishing creatures – Calciderm, Keldon Marauders, Aven Riftwatchers, and Lavacore Elemental. One suspend creature is also in the deck, the Riftmarked Knight. Playing with these cards are two Timebugs and two Timecraftings.
The deck has a minor growth theme. Two Brute Forces and a Fatal Frenzy give the deck a touch of unpredictability in the combat zone.
Avalanche Riders, Aven Riftwatchers, Keldon Marauders, and Mogg War Marshal all have come into play abilities. A handful of other creatures are the Icatian Javelineers, which have just one use each; the shadow Soltari Priest; protection oriented Children of Korlis; and the defensive Errant Doomsayers.
The deck also has a small slate of removal. Dead / Gone and Sunlance are solid removal, while the Dawn Charm can counter a threat.
So that is the deck. How does it work? The gating creatures work well with vanishing creatures, picking them up before they die to reload. That makes sense. Play a Calciderm and then swing until you need more counters on it, and then bounce it back with a gater.
The Icatian Javelineer just has one use as a Tim. Bounce it back to get a new counter on it. Okay, that makes sense, right? However, that’s not that powerful or potent, so there should be other uses.
The 187 creatures can be bounced and reused. To me, this seems to have the most potential for abuse, and yet, all we have here is one damage to a play, blow a land, make a 1/1 goblin token, and gain two life. This is not a powerful suite of CIP abilities (except for the Riders… those are good).
As a result, we take a powerful mechanic and give it chumps to play with. The deck plays well, but it always feels underpowered, it feels like it should have been more than it is. At least this section of the deck plays well.
There are side things this deck does very poorly. The Timebug and Timecrafting, for example. What are you using these on? Is Riftmarked Knight so good that you want to pull counters off more quickly? You can’t target Calciderm. The Riftwatchers are okay, but they aren’t game winning or anything. The Marauders are poor, to be frank. It’s now worth working hard to keep a Hill Giant in play. That leaves Lavacore Elemental.
I will grant you that Lavacore Elemental is a fine card and that the above four cards (two each of Timebugs and Timecrafting) work well with it. However, is it worth playing four cards as helpers to seven? Especially when only two of those seven truly benefit from those four helpers? Especially when those helpers are useless on their own?
This section of the deck works very poorly.
The growth surprise section is good because your opponent doesn’t expect it. On the other hand, it’s not pervasive enough to rely upon when you have need.
The removal is good and under represented. This deck simply needs more. If you draw it, you’d better really need it in order for you to cast it.
Let’s say you play this precon a few times, and now you are ready to clean out the chaff and streamline the deck. What would I recommend?
The first thing I do is focus on what works. The gating creatures combined with 187 creatures is a powerful engine. Use that. Also, picking up creatures like Calciderm is a solid play as well.
Look at cards like Ghitu Slinger, Keldon Vandals, more Avalanche Riders, Solemn Simulacrum, Temple Acolyte, Cloudchaser Eagle, and so forth. Feel free to play cards recently printed, such as Firemaw Kavu, if they give you what you want.
I’d also up the number of Calciderms. They work well here.
To clear up space, I’d pull the combat tricks, Timebugs and Timecraftings. That’d give you some nice space for some good 187 creatures from your collection.
This deck could also use some more gating creatures. I’d pull the two Doomsayers, the Soltari Priest, the Riftmarked Knight, and the Lavacores for five more gating creatures. Run whatever you have in collection, but if you can, look at maxing out the Whitemane Lions, (which means add one more) because they are the cheapest to cast, so they have the most synergy with the deck’s concept.
This deck runs Mogg War Marshal, which I find underwhelming. I like the idea, however. If you have any Goblin Marshals or Siege-Gang Commanders, you might want to consider one or two for the deck as a late game-winning condition.
You want to retain the deck’s precon essence, but make it better at the same time. These changes can help you do that.
Rituals of Rebirth
This next deck is a pretty solid reanimation deck complete with flashback recursion. Let’s take a look at the actual decklist.
1 Sengir Autocrat
1 Bog Serpent
1 Twisted Abomination
3 Phantasmagorian
2 Essence Warden
2 Greenseeker
3 Fa’adiyah Seer
1 Wall of Roots
1 Spike Feeder
2 Havenwood Wurm
1 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava
2 Icatian Crier
2 Jedit’s Dragoons
1 Teneb, the Harvester
3 Dread Return
3 Evolution Charm
2 Search for Tomorrow
2 Harmonize
2 Rebuff the Wicked
1 Resurrection
7 Swamp
11 Forest
4 Plains
2 Terramorphic Expanse
This is a very good Reanimator deck for a precon, and it makes a good baseline to measure your own Reanimator decks against. If your own creation does not play at least as well as this one does, then it demonstrates the ins and outs of reanimation deck.
First, I want to point that that though this deck does have a reliance on three colors, it has three Evolution Charms, a pair of Expanses, two Greenseekers, a Twisted Abomination, and two Search for Tomorrows. That’s a large number of cards that will help you get the mana you need. That’s a good deck building precept.
This deck really works well together, which is unlike the first deck that has sub-themes that don’t work with the main theme. Take Evolution Charm for example. If you need mana, feel free to play it to get whatever color you need. It’s also an instant Raise Dead, which works perfectly in a recursion oriented deck. Lastly, all of your beaters, save Teneb, are grounded, so you can use it to Jump over ground defenders and get that crucial, game-winning hit in. It’s perfect for this deck.
Greenseeker is another example. It gets lands, which you need, strips them out of your deck, increasing card quality, and discards a card so you can recur it later. It’s a perfect fit for this deck.
Also helping you get mana are Fa’adiyah Seers and a Wall of Roots. The Seers will either get you a land or put something in the graveyard. Maybe it will be a fattie or even a flashbackable Dread Return? Wall of Roots accelerates your mana development while providing a nice defense.
The deck has several recursion helpers. The aforementioned Greenseekers pair with other spellshapers (Icatian Crier). At first, you might wonder if the Criers are superfluous, but I assure you, they work just as well in this deck as Greenseeker and Evo Charm. They make you two creature tokens while discarding something. Remember that the flashback on Dread Return is to sacrifice three creatures. Icatian Crier not only can make you those creatures, but it can toss the fattie into the graveyard that you want to recur.
There are a few creatures with an innate ability to send themselves to your graveyard. Twisted Abomination can get you a land early and then sit around waiting for a reanimation spell to bring him back out. That’s a very clever inclusion. Spike Feeder can be played, get you some life or hop the counters to another creature, and then stick around until you need more life or more counters.
There are several great cards for this deck. Dread Return is obviously good because you can get a creature into play twice. The deck runs a lot of smaller creatures, and you can sac them when they’ve hooked you up with mana. The Seers, Greenseekers, an almost dead Wall of Roots – these are cards you can sacrifice without any problems. There’s also several token makers in the deck that provide fodder. Resurrection is also included. Harmonize helps you draw cards. So many precons dodge the good support cards that a deck needs, but here we have a pair of Harmonizes.
Teneb was a brilliant rare to include. We already think that he’s the best of the new dragons in my multiplayer group, and in here he’s just golden. Jedit Ojanen is a solid beater and his tokens add to the threat level or can be used to fuel Dread Returns. Phantasmagorian is solid enough. You can get him back by discarding three cards, which can include extra lands or another fattie for the yard. However, his vanilla 6/6ness isn’t so great that he needed to be included as a trio.
And that brings me to the flaw in this deck. Its fatties are generally poor. Jedit’s Dragoons are a poor reanimation target. Bog Serpent is an amazingly bad choice. Lastly, the 5/6 trampling Havenwood Wurms leave something to be desired.
If I had built the precon, I would have tried to have fit in some cards like Calciderm or Deadwood Treefolk in place of maybe a Phatasmagorian or two. At the common level, I may have jettisoned a pair of the bad fatties for a pair of Thallid Shell Dwellers – making creatures for the Dread Return flashback while also providing early defense. I might have even gone for a Necrotic Sliver and / or Giant Dustwasps.
The deck has a few other cards as well. Sengir Autocrat brings a full slate of Dread Return tokens with him when he comes into play. Since they are just 0/1s however, they have no real impact on the part, so he’s not a major threat. Essence Wardens aren’t that hot because you don’t need the life. You have the Dragoons and Spike Feeder, so there’s really no need for the Wardens. I usually just sacrifice them to Dread Return. Rebuff the Wicked is a solid choice to protect your good stuff, like Teneb. As such, I don’t mind it so much.
If you were to add cards to the deck, there are several ways you can go. You should toss in another Dread Return, since the deck is built around it. You can get better fatties, although Teneb is so good he never needs to get replaced. A traditional Reanimator deck will look at one of the Akromas, Avatar of Woe, and so forth. This deck can easily turn into a block deck and still add the above.
I’d consider Deranged Hermit if you went outside of Block or Standard. He adds creatures for Dread Return and he’s good enough to be a reanimation target. A couple of these guys, one to replace the Autocrat and one to replace a bad fatty, would give you some extra punch.
The deck could use removal. Spellshapers like Avenger En-Dal and Notorious Assassin can help you out here, while also giving you a discard outlet. There may be too many ways of getting fatties into the yard in this deck, so I’d cut the Fa’adiyah Seers, which are unreliable. I’d also axe the Essence Wardens. Those cuts make room for two of each of these spellshapers. Undertaker would be pretty good as well, and in Block or Standard.
I’d want some form of regular recursion. Options include Volrath’s Stronghold, Oversold Cemetery, Genesis, and Recurring Nightmare. Adding a single copy of Genesis and Stronghold would make the deck a lot more powerful.
On the other hand, if you go too far, you make the deck too similar to other recursion decks. You’ll need to decide how much tinkering you allow to this deck. It works very well together and I am impressed by how good and subtle many of these cards are for the deck. Kudos to whoever created this deck.
However, it is not my favorite in the set. Want to know what is? Read on.
Unraveling Mind – One of Abe’s Top Ten Best Precons of all Time
I’ve set you up for the precon, now let’s take a quick gander at the decklist.
4 Mindlash Sliver
1 Ridged Kusite
3 Undertaker
1 Dauthi Slayer
3 Trespasser Il-Vec
2 Big Game Hunter
2 Brain Gorgers
1 Mirri the Cursed
2 Nightshade Assassin
2 Gorgon Recluse
2 Muck Drubb
2 Phantasmagorian
2 Reckless Wurm
1 Magus of the Arena
1 Kor Dirge
1 Treacherous Urge
1 Dark Withering
2 Lightning Axe
1 Browbeat
1 Fiery Temper
1 Disintegrate
14 Swamp
7 Mountain
3 Terramorphic Expanse
Do you see what is so good about this deck? Take your time, we’re in no hurry. You’ll note that like the previous deck, this deck also has a discard theme.
Of all of the possible theme decks they could have built with the Planar Chaos chard set, they chose to focus on madness. Here’s a little known fact. In Torment, there is not a single madness precon. They had gone with the Blue/Green threshold aggro theme in Odyssey in Trounce-o-Matic. That deck featured Wild Mongrels, Roar of the Wurm, Werebears and whatnot. In Torment, the designers made the decision to have every precon feature Black combining with a different color.
To be fair, the Insanity precon does include Basking Rootwallas, Strength of Lunacy, and Arrogant Wurms along with a heavy discard theme. That’s more of a sidelight to the deck, and not a central theme. This is true of two other precons that had Obsessive Search and Strength of Isolation in them.
This is a precon that is actually built around madness itself. Trust me, if you play this deck and play Insanity, there’s no comparison.
In this deck we have several clever cards that are abusable and smart. Mindlash Sliver is an insightful choice for the deck, and it works so well that it is the only card we have four of. As a one drop, it doesn’t inspire much animosity towards your deck. Then, when you sack it, everybody discards a card. That’s good for you because your card has madness. That’s good for you because your opponent(s) all lose a card. You never feel bad about tossing it to Phantasmagorian or in front of a big attacker.
Speaking about Phantasmagorian, in the previous deck he was okay. Here, he is a bomb. At instant speed, you can discard three cards, while retrieving one of your best creatures. I’ve often discarded three madness cards to him, making him a major trigger. He is feared by my opponents, who have declared him broken in this deck.
The madness cards are good. Timeshifted Fiery Temper is so good, you wish you had more of them and fewer Undertakers in your Timeshifted quota. Arrogant Wurm has become Reckless Wurm, and you have two of them in your deck. They should need no introduction. Big Game Hunter and Nightshade Assassin are great creature removal options. I was taking out large creatures like Bringer of the Blue Dawn and Avatar of Woe with these guys the other day. Your deck can often hold its own against different types of opponents.
Gorgon Recluse is a nice surprise blocker that kills a non-Black creature. Muck Drubb rarely gets plays for his ability to bounce targeted spells, but he is a serviceable enough 3/3. Dark Withering is a card you really want a lot more of. I’m surprised that the deck didn’t come with more of this virtually essential common. Brain Gorgers are solid bodies with a built in Edict option, which can add to your removal slate.
Your deck comes with great madness outlets. I love Lightning Axe in this deck, which takes out Visara level threats while also allowing you to play a madness card. The Undertakers are solid, although a bit underwhelming in their power. There aren’t that many cards you’d really like to recur. Ridged Kusite is a cheap enough spellshaper and giving a creature a Guided Strike is mildly useful, although it’s not as power a combat trick when it’s not a surprise. Trespasser Il-Vecs are solid, mana free madness outlets, although I’d rather have had one less of these and one more Dark Withering.
The deck has some solid backup cards for it. Browbeat shows that the designers knew this deck could run out of steam quickly, and it’s certainly true. However, including a single copy was a mistake, in my opinion. At least there were two Harmonizes in the previous deck.
Kor Dirge and Disintegrate are good removal options, even if they don’t support the theme. Each can seriously impact the board.
Both of the rares seem out of place. Magus of the Arena is big, but you wonder at why he was included. It adds to the removal suite, however. Mirri the Cursed is certainly a great creature, but you wonder why she’s here. To be fair, there really aren’t that many rares in color in this set, so I think they did about as good as they could. They obviously weren’t going to include Damnation or Null Profusion, but they should have considered them. Null Profusion fixes the card drawing problem while Damnation adds a powerful tool to a controllish deck like this one, and gives the Undertakers more work to do.
Dauthi Slayer appears to just be tacked on as a cheap shadow creature. Here was a Time Shifted card that could have been something that supported the theme, like Fiery Temper or a Browbeat.
Here is why I like the deck so much. Let’s compare this deck to the previous deck, which was a great choice.
In the previous deck, the cards worked very well together. However, the theme was disrupted by having relatively bad choices for reanimation targets. They had Teneb and Jedit and that was about it.
In this deck, although some of the cards that are in the theme are not included in numbers I would like (also true of the above deck as well), they are all good. Even Undertaker and Ridged Kusite are better for this deck than Bog Serpent and Jedit’s Dragoons are for the above deck.
In other words, this deck supports the theme better than the previous deck. To be fair, the previous deck is one of the best precons I’ve seen support their theme. It just let me down in that one way.
Second, this deck’s worst off-theme cards are much better than the other deck’s best off-theme cards. Disintegrate, Kor Chant, Magus of the Arena, Mirri, and Dauthi Slayer are much better cards than Rebuff the Wicked and Essence Warden.
These are two important areas where I think this deck simply gets it better than the previous deck. Now sure, you want to make changes.
More madness removal is the first thing you’d want to change. You’d also want to up the number of Reckless Wurms. There’s a bit of a disconnect between the Nightshade Assassins, which want you t hold cards, and the rest of the deck, which wants you to discard them. As a result, you might want to pitch the Assassins and the Muck Drubbs while you are at it for these better madness cards.
Since this deck wants you to discard, take a look at the hellbent cards from Dissension. There are a few good choices there. Several cards in Dissension have everybody discard, and that works well here. Delirium Skeins might have some power.
I’d up the number of Browbeats significantly. The more you have, the more powerful they become. This deck needs to draw cards. Another option might be Grafted Skullcap, giving you an extra card, a way to get hellbent if you go that direction, and a madness trigger all in one.
See also: Ensnaring Bridge. And Null Brooch. And Bottomless Pit.
These are just ways your deck could conceivably go. You certainly don’t have to go this route. You could use some of the idea mentioned in the previous deck. Notorious Assassin, for example, would fit easily into this deck.
…
There you have it. The three good precons from this set are featured above. If you haven’t played them, hopefully you’ll pick one up and play around with it. If you have played with one, maybe you’ll take a closer look at the modification thereof.
Or maybe you’ll just hit the back button. Who knows?
Until later,
P.S. – You shouldn’t hit the back button. You should go to the forums and write!