You’ve been wanting to jump into the fun, casual format known as Commander for a while now, and just recently picked up the new Starter Commander decks from your local store. Perhaps you’ve played a few games and want to make the deck better? Let’s take a look at what your deck does, find a path you want to play into, and what cards you need to make that more efficient on a budget. Are you going to win a tournament with these upgrades? Absolutely not. But if you’re looking to just up your game amongst your friends, this is a great way to start.
Let’s take a look at the Blue-Black Grave Danger deck…
Commander: Gisa and Geralf
What does the deck do?
Just like the Draconic Destruction deck, this deck focuses on one thing really well, and its zombies. And this deck chock full of zombies. It’s about putting cards into your graveyard, then casting the zombies again from the graveyard. Rinse, repeat, make zombies, laugh at your opponents.
Our Goal
Beef the zombies, take over the world
The Modifications
Ok, so this deck is pretty tight as is. There’s a lot of synergy between the cards and there’s a solid amount of ramp for the lower cost of zombies you’d run into. I REALLY want to add Grave Titan to the mix but with it sitting at $12 at the time of writing, he’s going to blow our budget so if you got the money spare, he’s a great addition to the deck given how many zombies he makes for his price.
But I digress, let’s focus on the budget side of things.We really want to focus on making our zombies better and better. Let’s start by swapping out Vizier of the Scorpion with Death Baron. Instead of just giving your Zombie Tokens Deathtouch, ALL of your Zombies get Deathtouch. Death Baron also pumps up your other zombies for a little extra power, making your attacks even more dangerous.
Now, let’s focus on the tribal elements that can really beef up the deck’s power. Firstly, let’s get plenty of card draw out of both zombies entering the battlefield, and attacking your opponent, by adding Kindred Discovery to the deck. Let’s remove Grimoire of the Dead to make room for it. I know, I know; Grimoire of the Dead just oozes flavour but we want zombies fast, and this is going to take three turns at best to see a benefit. Let’s also add in Reflections of Litjara to the deck to get double the benefit out of your zombies. Every Zombie creature you cast is copied, making a token copy of the zombie as well. That’s just great value in this case. So let’s swap it out with Curse of Disturbance. Don’t worry about zombie creation. Things are about to get wild.
Now let’s make some more zombies! Endless Ranks of the Dead is going to create more zombies every turn, just by existing on the battlefield, so let’s trade out Liliana’s Devotee. Why? One, he’s not a zombie. Sorry but he doesn’t trigger any of the zombie tribal cards we’re moving into the deck. And two, Endless Ranks of the Dead is only one mana more, a little harder to remove, and has an easier condition to meet for zombie creation. And if you’re going to be casting cards out of the graveyard, well Tormond the Desecrator will give you an extra 2/2 Zombie token every time you do it. Let’s take out Lotleth Giant as it may be a zombie, but it’s extremely expensive and is only going to give you a benefit if you’re playing long enough to fill your graveyard.
Now, what about some zombie creation based around death? Let’s start with one half of the commander, Ghoulcaller Gisa. In this form, she not only creates zombies based on the power of whatever creature you sacrifice (which, at its base level, can turn one zombie token into two), but allows you to put a zombie creature into your graveyard to cast again using Gisa and Geralf or Liliana, Untouched by Death, which also plays into Tormond the Desecrator creating a zombie when something leaves your graveyard (are you getting how commander works yet? It’s going to be like this a lot). Now you’re shuffling cards from the battlefield to the graveyard and back again, all creating more zombie creature tokens as you do. Let’s now swap out Spark Reaper. Vampiric Rites is doing the same thing as Spark Reaper in a less-removable form and we’re making plenty more zombies that losing one won’t be a massive deal.
Finally, let’s cap off our creature swaps with Wilthelt, the Rotcleaver. Sick of your zombies dying? Well why don’t you get more zombies just because your zombies are dying so you can resurrect the resurrected. That’s right, Wilthelt creates ANOTHER 2/2 zombie token every time a zombie without decay you control dies (though he does give them decayed, meaning they can’t block and must be sacrificed after attacking). That’s more zombies to attack with, or sacrifice to Vampiric Rites to draw more cards (or to both attack with, and then, while the decay ability is on the stack, sacrifice with Vampiric Rites). To make space for him, we’re going to take out Lazotep Reaver as it only creates one zombie army token when it enters, or adds a counter to an already existing zombie army token, whereas Wilthelt makes more and more zombies to overwhelm the opponent.
That’s about it with the deck when it comes to modifications. There’s not a lot we can do with ramp, so the shift to cheaper, efficient versions of what was already in the deck will mean there’s not too much change in how your resources come out. The removal and control elements are fine. If you wanted to, you can find much better cards that perform that function but that would start pushing the budget a little too hard in that regard. So would definitely be a path you take once you’re happy with your deck on a creature and enchantment side of things.
Out:
- 1x Vizier of the Scorpion
- 1x Grimoire of the Dead
- 1x Curse of Disturbance
- 1x Liliana’s Devotee
- 1x Lotleth Giant
- 1x Spark Reaper
- 1x Lazotep Reaver
In:
- 1x Death Baron
- 1x Kindred Discovery
- 1x Reflections of Litjara
- 1x Endless Ranks of the Dead
- 1x Tormond the Desecrator
- 1x Wilhelt the Rotcleaver
- 1x Ghoulcaller Gisa
TOTAL UPGRADE COST: APPROX $28.00AUD (at time of publishing)
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