Token Triumph - A Noob's Guide: Upgrading the Starter Commander Decks on a budget

Dylan Shearer 23 Jan 24, 2023

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 Green-White Token Triumph deck…

Commander: Emmara, Soul of the Accord

What does the deck do?

Emmara, Soul of the Accord is the quintessential token commander deck. You make small creatures, and throw them at your opponents as fast and as often as you can. The deck already has a solid win-condition with Overrun, giving your large board an unstoppable damage output, and with so many elements working to create creature tokens, and Emmara herself being only two mana, you can easily recover your army when faced with a board wipe or two.

Our Goal

To win with tokens. Specifically, to upgrade the token creation and juice up the damage output.

The Modifications

Let’s start by beefing the combat potential, and those are the pieces that will cost the most in this modification. Firstly, there’s Cathar’s Crusade. Make sure you have plenty of dice handy because you’re going to be using them. Every time a creature enters the battlefield, every creature you control gets a +1/+1 counter. If you’re creating at least one new creature token every turn, that’s +1/+1 to EVERYTHING you control… PERMANENTLY (at least while it’s on the battlefield). We’re going to take out Valor in Akros. It’s only one mana less but only gives your creatures the +1/+1 until end of turn. So we’re making that permanent.

Next, let’s get Beastmasters Ascension into the deck. It doesn’t do much at first, but you’re making plenty of creatures and once you start swinging into your opponents, Beastmasters Ascension will eventually buff your board by +5/+5, allowing your creatures to do some serious damage to your opponents, or anything standing in their way. Let’s take out Collective Blessing. I love the +3/+3 pump but Beastmasters Ascension is going to do it better and faster than a six-drop.

And Finally, let’s add the +1/+1 counters with Song of Freyalise, a saga that gives you more mana (through creature tapping mind you, something you’ll want to do a lot with Emmarra) and eventually a board-wide +1/+1 as well as trample and indestructible until end of turn. In the early game, it accelerates your resources before pumping what you have, in the late game, it can overwhelm your opponents similar to Overrun. Let’s swap out Presence of Gond to make room.

Let’s see how we can generate more tokens. The easiest addition here is Oketra’s Monument. Not only does it reduce your white creature spells by one generic mana, it also generates you a 1/1 warrior token with vigilance every time you cast a creature spell of any colour. More tokens equals more power. We also have to add in Cadira, Caller of the Small from Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate. If she ever lands a hit on an opponent, you are making a 1/1 rabbit creature token for each token you control. Imagine how that ends up looking with Cathar’s Crusade on the field. To make room for these two, let’s swap out Scatter the Seeds due to it being five mana or already requiring a board of tokens to be effective, and Idol of Oblivion as it only gives you a minor bonus if you’ve already created a token this turn.

Now, it’s time to add a little more tap-untap shenanigans as it allows you to abuse Emmara’s ability even more to create warrior tokens without needing to attack. Let’s add Saryth, the Viper’s Fang to give your creatures some protection as well as allow you to pay mana to tap or untap Emmara, and throw in Springleaf Drum and Relic of Legends to give more out more options to tap Emmara without needing to enchant her. For this, let’s drop Karametra’s Favor (as that is destroyed when the creature is destroyed), Hornet Queen (cause I firmly believe this card is a trap for new players and overcosted for what it does), and Dawn of Hope.

With all this refined token generation, we should look at benefiting more from it, so let’s add in the new Tocasia’s Welcome which will draw you a card each turn you create a low-powered token (which is why you should have some ability-based token generation; so you can do it on your opponent’s turn too and draw more cards), Shamanic Revelation to draw a card for each creature you control (and gain a bunch of life if you’ve already laid down a buff or two), and Soul Warden so that every time a creature enters the battlefield, you gain a bit of life. To make room, let’s take out Voice of Many, Slate of Ancestry, and Camaraderie.

And finally, let’s add a card that will end the game once you attack… Mirror Entity. Look at that ability. Pay X mana, turn every creature you control into X/X. This applies BEFORE any enchantments or counters so your massive army of 1/1s with 4 counters on it becomes unstoppable. Now this is one of the key ways to win, so let’s remove something that isn’t helping in that regard. I love you Ajani, but your +8 is just too far away and your +1 is only for one creature at a time., so you have to go, sorry. Bye Ajani, Caller of the Pride.