Upgrading the Angels: They're Just Like Us but Cooler and with Wings Commander Precon
Tally ho, cathars! Noted Angel enthusiast and PlayEDH staff member Eliana (also known as defiantcathar) here. Chief is attending Magic Summit 2023, so he’ll be absent from the desk at which he normally writes these weekly features. I’m filling in, so I thought it would be a neat opportunity to dive into one of my favorite subjects in Magic: Angels!
As I’m sure you are all aware, Wizards recently released their third Secret Lair deck entitled ‘Angels: They are Just Like Us but Cooler and Have Wings’, and while this title is categorically an untrue statement—you may have heard me expound upon angel’s lack of humanity and why it makes them so interesting on Casual Magic with Shivam Bhatt in the past—the deck itself was honestly pretty cool! It included a lot of staples that I would say are relatively crucial to making a good Angel typal deck in EDH.
In case you’re unaware, one of my very first Commander decks was a Lyra Dawnbringer deck which eventually evolved into my Giada, Font of Hope deck. This is the infamous SINNER GET READY deck which you can frequently catch me playing on the PlayEDH Twitch stream. While my own deck was checked for PlayEDH Mid Power, we’re going to be focused on upgrading the Angels Secret Lair precon while still keeping it in line with the expectations of PlayEDH Low Power.
While the stock list for this premium precon includes tons of really cool cards I would consider important for the archetype, and many that are far above average precon power level, it still is a precon. Unlike most other Commander precons that typically fall into the Battlecruiser power level, this deck was rated for Low Power out of the box while still having some growing room.
With that in mind, I decided that a fun exercise would be to upgrade the deck with as few switches as possible.
I settled on the number 15 without making the deck do too much to push it out of Low Power. Who better to guide you through empowering your holy host than I? Don’t answer that! Let’s just jump in and take a peek at the original list.
The face commander for the deck would be either Gisela,the Broken Blade or Bruna, the Fading Light. I wanted to keep Brisela, Voice of Nightmares as a very real wincon in this deck since the deck leans into it a bit, so I made the choice to run Bruna as the commander. My logic behind this choice is that in the event Gisela gets removed, you can always cast Bruna from the command zone in order to recur her—with the obvious exception of exile—so I think that the likelihood of melding them into Brisela is higher with Bruna in the command zone.
With Search for Glory and Thalia’s Lancers already present in the deck, finding the other half seems pretty easy. Additionally, Bruna can be used to grab almost any other creature card in the deck from the graveyard, and having that ability in the command zone seems strong. I even swapped all of the regular Plains out for Snow-Covered Plains to maximize the effectiveness of Search For Glory, but I’m not counting that decision toward the fifteen card limit that I set for swaps.
The first thing I noticed about this deck is that the curve is not very smooth and the average mana value is extremely high, which honestly is par for the course with most precons. Anyone familiar with my decks knows that I’m very obsessive about having a very clean and efficient curve in my decks and making the most out of my mana. The stock list does have a lot of cost reduction and ramp, but the inefficient nature of the curve kind of renders it moot and leads to slow starts. Therefore, one of my primary goals I set was to smooth this out.
To this end, let’s look at my cuts and then break down the decision-making process behind them:
Plains ×2
Myriad Landscape
Marble Diamond
Griffin Aerie
Dawn of Hope
Entreat the Angels
Kindred Boon
Ajani, Strength of the Pride
Keeper of the Accord
Dawnbreak Reclaimer
Nykthos Paragon
Arden Angel
Emeria Shepard
Sephara, Sky’s Blade
Some of these are good cards that are right on the line of being kept, but some just do a lot less. With the knowledge that these are fifteen cards I’d like to replace, let’s examine what the fifteen new cards I added to the deck are, and then take a look at some of my choices and explain why they were made:
Minas Tirith
Emeria’s Call//Emeria, Shattered Skyclave
Mother of Runes
Pyre of Heroes
Luminarch Ascension
Youthful Valkyrie
Stoneforge Mystic
Flawless Maneuver
Resplendent Angel
Stroke of Midnight
Akroma’s Will
Karmic Guide
Lyra Dawnbringer
Steel Seraph
Avacyn, Angel of Hope
Now I really wanted to lean into the Angel theme here, so I cut a few of the cards that were geared toward producing other kinds of tokens. These include Griffin Aerie, Dawn of Hope, and Keeper of the Accord. I replaced them with cards that produce angel tokens such as Luminarch Ascension and Resplendent Angel. Resplendent Angel also has the awesome boon of having great synergy with cards in the deck like Righteous Valkyrie and my daughter, Giada, Font of Hope. Combine these with the fact that the deck has a strong life gain sub-theme and the choice seems fairly obvious.
Luminarch Ascension early game has the potential to just absolutely steamroll opponent’s and combined with other early game threats we swapped in like Youthful Valkyrie—a card that can get very big very fast—and these other low mana value cards that are already in the deck, the power of this card becomes painfully evident.
Another card that strongly supports the Angel theme and the life gain sub-theme is Lyra Dawnbringer. Considering her recent reprint in Dominaria Remastered that drove her price down considerably, I am very surprised she wasn’t already included in this deck. She buffs the team and enables you to constantly be gaining life, triggering your Resplendent Angel and Angelic Accord, and is just a very powerful body on her own as a 5/5 body with flying, first strike and lifelink.
Also joining our team of new Angels is Steel Seraph, a card that can either be played on turn 3 as an earlier attacker or later in the game as a larger threat. Regardless of when you choose to play her, each of your combats you’ll get to hand a keyword to one of your creatures, which can be very valuable and flexible. Oftentimes the extra life gain or vigilance can be game-changing.
Another reason I really like Steel Seraph is that it fills multiple roles, at different points in the game, but succeeds in filling a crucial niche in our Pyre of Heroes chain, another of our additions. Pyre of Heroes is an amazing pod style card for any typal deck and I highly recommend using it. We have a pretty clean ladder all the way up to our curve topper, and this card can enable you to power out big threats earlier than usual, and prevent them from being countered.
Speaking of our curve topper, it’s obviously Avacyn, Angel of Hope. This one is replacing our good friend Sephara, Sky’s Blade by just being a strict upgrade. Both are fine Angels, but if I can only keep one, I’m keeping Avacyn. I also decided to cut the slow and mana-intensive Kindred Boon in favor of Flawless Maneuver, which can be used offensively or defensively depending on who is casting removal. I’m a huge fan of modality in cards, which is why I love the included board wipes in the form of Cleansing Nova, Austere Command, and Dismantling Wave. Avacyn and Flawless Maneuver can make these already great wipes even better.
I’m also ditching Emeria Shepherd and Dawnbreak Reclaimer in favor of Karmic Guide when it comes to recursion. This succeeds in lowering our curve for a card we are much more likely to actually be able to play—and can possibly get back later for a second use with the commander—and removes the element of chance when it comes to the Reclaimer. I’ve also chosen to cut the very cool but very gimmicky Arden Angel.
These were the most significant additions, but I also wanted to briefly go over the remaining swaps:
All-stars like Mother of Runes and Stoneforge Mystic should be in almost any mono-white deck. Mother of Runes is great for creature-based strategies and stopping your Angels from being removed. The deck already has a suite of Equipment cards, so having a tutor in Stoneforge Mystic to help find the right one sounds like a huge boon.
Cutting Plains and Myriad Landscape in favor of Emeria’s Call//Emeria, the Shattered Skyclave and Minas Tirith adds a card which functions either as a shock land—inconsequential with the amount of life gain in this deck—or a spell that makes Angels with the added benefit of protecting our few non-Angels and a source of card draw.
I also cut some of the slower cards to add more instant spells. Stroke of Midnight offers versatile single-target removal at and Akroma’s Will is an actual wincon that can be used offensively or defensively. Yay versatility!
With these fifteen swaps, I’ve endeavored to add a bit of consistency, redundancy, and interactive power to the already present lines and gameplan within this deck. Are there more changes I’d make if I were making the deck for myself? Sure! I’d probably just make my already existing angel deck (lol) but honestly, this deck in the form I’ve presented in this article seems like a blast to play and honestly reminds me a lot of what SINNER GET READY started as before I really got into the weeds of optimization. And sometimes, getting back to our roots with commander and playing some lower power decks that are that much more thematic can be all the more fun.
I hope you all enjoyed this little upgrade of the latest Secret Lair deck!
You can find this deck and plenty more on the PlayEDH Low Power Hub that’s hosted by our good friends at Moxfield. All of these decks are ready to play right away in our curated power levels, but you can also use them for inspiration when brewing new decks of your own. We’re always on the lookout for new decks to feature in this collection with credit to the original brewers, so your deck might even be the next addition!
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