Out of the Box: Wilds of Eldraine
Time for another ‘Out of the Box’! For those new to the series, I’ll be taking a look at the latest set of precons, point out new cards that stand out and provide some safe upgrade paths while still keeping these decks in check for Battlecruiser, our precon-Magic power level on the server.
Wilds of Eldraine gave us two new precons, Fae Dominion (Faeries) and Virtue and Valor (Enchantments). While we haven’t seen a Faerie precon yet, we have seen plenty of typal decks in the past. The same can be said about enchantment decks. It’s only been 4 weeks since Enduring Enchantments released, though this one plays quite differently than Anikthea, Hand of Erebos.
Fae Dominion
New Commanders
Tegwyll, Duke of Splendor is a 2/3 with flying and deathtouch, a Faerie lord and a source of card draw in the command zone. Evasive keywords in the command zone, a buff for your entire board and card draw – granted, with a small downside – that’s a lot of potential power for just 3 mana.
When trying out the precon, I did feel like I wasn’t creating tokens consistently enough to truly make that card draw get out of hand, though there are some amazing late game lines of play to fill the board with Faerie friends. Potentially that’s by design, since the card draw and life loss are mandatory. You don’t want to have a board of 20 1/1 Faerie tokens, get boardwiped, and die off of your own card draw. If you’ve ever put Dark Prophecy or Undead Augur in a deck, you know what I’m talking about.
Alela, Cunning Conqueror gives you 1/1 Faerie Rogue tokens for playing at instant speed on not your turn and goads one creature per opponent you’re hitting on combat damage. Every creature in the deck outside of Hullbreaker Horror has flying, so connecting with at least one opponent shouldn’t be that difficult.
To ensure you’ll get enough triggers to create those tokens, the deck comes with 17 instants and 9 cards that that have an Adventure instant or flash. In a homebrew deck the potential of the token creation is going to be much higher making this a very strong ability, but the goad effect will always be just one creature per opponent, assuming you hit each opponent so this is less impactful.
I like this commander a lot, which will be a surprise to nobody, knowing 80% of my currently assembled EDH decks are in Dimir colors and the ones that aren’t are Esper and Grixis colored. ‘Before my turn’, and ‘In response’ are two of my favorite sentences in EDH and I’m convinced I’ll make a deck with this commander soon.
You should be mindful when Alela and Nymris, Oona’s Trickster – which is also in the precon – are on the battlefield at the same time. It might mill away more cards than you originally hoped for. While it’s true you get some nice card selection this way, despite this being a blue black deck, it doesn’t really play around with the graveyard at all. Don’t get greedy, and potentially hold back digging deeper.
Obyra, Dreaming Duelist – which Google Docs keeps autocorrecting to ‘Opera’ or ‘Obama’ so Google, please stop – is a new legendary creature from the Standard set, and lowers your opponent's life totals when a Faerie enters the battlefield under your control. I feel putting Obyra at the helm might mean more removal gets pointed your way because people don’t want the simple act of creatures entering your field to directly impact their life totals without involving combat.
In a dedicated token spam deck that can more consistently flood the board, Obyra is going to put in a lot of work. In the precon I found it was mostly a finisher for when Oona, Queen of the Fae was able to stick around for several turn rotations and you had enough mana to put into her activated ability. This seems like a great card in the 99 with Oona at the helm and vice versa. Thanks Obyra.
Who’s Your Commander
In the unedited precon, the correct call is likely to keep Tegwyll at the helm. The deathtouch is quite often relevant in the power level where turning creatures sideways is usually the way to win the game, and having what is essentially single target creature destruction in the command zone if people decide to swing your way seemed to matter quite often.
You’re also going to draw cards whenever anyone boardwipes, which means you’ll have an easier time rebuilding. If Alela made it so every creature you hit someone with was able to target a creature and goad it, the best choice would have likely been different.
AND YET… I’m an idiot that likes playing at instant speed so I’d still put Alela in the command zone, just so I can ‘in response’ most of the game, and be very sad when someone plays Dosan the Falling Leaf. I also feel ‘card draw in the command zone’ is a boring design trope that’s been overused the past few years. Recently, if your commander isn’t providing you with a direct card advantage for simply playing the game, you’re actively missing out, and I dislike how this is now the norm when looking to build a deck.
It surprises me how little actual Faerie support exists in the game. Tegwyll and Scion of Oona – which got reprinted in the precon – are the only two ‘other Faeries you control get’ cards in all of Magic. While you can supplement this with generic typal cards like Adaptive Automaton, it didn’t really feel like Faeries were under-supported before.
While it’s true they have less synergistic cards than Vampires, Goblins, or Elves do, I never thought ‘You know what needs more support? People who want to play Faeries decks.’ Especially given their relevance in other formats, such as UB Faeries in Pauper. I’m happy to see that the new cards take a different approach to typal support in this precon though. Not every creature type should just get +1/+1 static bonuses, or staple more keywords on bodies like Slivers do.
I expect this precon to do quite well in our own Battlecruiser environment. Your creatures fly, it has lots of respones, it gets to play a lot of spells during not your own turn and it’s more combat-control in playstyle than it initially appears to be. If you’ve enjoyed the Firkraag precon in the past, this might be right up your alley.
Interesting New Cards
Archmage of Echoes is here to copy your Faerie and Wizard permanent spells. Only caring about permanent spells is quite strange wording for a card that cares about creature types, and likely a way of cleaning up rules questions and potential confusion such as ‘does Aquitect’s Will trigger Deeproot Waters?’ (It does, by the way). It was quite a surprise to see this card and Reflections of Littjara in the same precon which seems like it can get out of hand easily.
The absence of large amounts of dedicated board-wide buffs giving your board more power and toughness means it still functions at roughly the same speed other typal decks play at. That doesn’t mean your opponents aren’t going to be upset when you now have three Puppeteer Cliques or Sowers of Temptation hit the field.
I also know someone’s going to name Horror with Reflections of Littjara, get access to two Hullbreaker Horrors, bounce the original back to hand with Consider or Opt and keep making more Hullbreakers… I’m less sad they worded Archmage of Echoes that way now, and let’s be honest, that someone is probably me.
Have you ever wanted a repeatable Gonti, Lord of Luxury or Siphon Insight everytime you ‘in response’ on an opponent’s turn? Because I certainly have! It’s worth mentioning that just like with the aforementioned cards, when Blightwing Bandit leaves the battlefield, you don’t lose access to the cards you exiled with it and you can still play those cards. Yes, play, not cast, so that also means lands you take from your opponents.
Agree on how to deal with the ‘face down’ part of the card over webcam play with your opponents, though most people at non-competitive tables choose to just reveal the information to the table instead. Like we state in our rules, ‘be more clear and more accommodating than when playing in person paper Magic’.
Favorite Boxed Line Of Play
Exxaxl: Reminder, card images on our website will always be click/tap to zoom. I see you, mobile readers.
A dark-mode switch is something that’s on the backburner for our website also.
First, swing for combat with Shadow Puppeteers on the field for what’s probably a lot of damage. Make sure you play this card right, creatures with flying are now Dragons in addition to its other types, meaning they’re still Faeries and still retain their Faerie related bonuses.
Keep track of nontoken creatures that die on anyone’s board. Tap down my remaining tokens to cast Tegwyll’s Scouring, again keeping track of nontoken creatures that die. Cast Thrilling Encore, with Obyra, Dreaming Duelist and Shadow Puppeteers in the graveyard. Who’s up for a game 2?
I’d also like to point out that Tegwyll’s Scouring and Thrilling Encore can both be played at instant speed which just seems like an amazing play to make as a two card synergy in someone’s end step right before your turn starts as well.
Cuts
Do you want the boring automatic cuts or the well thought out ones? Because the easy boring ones are Temple of the False God, Arcane Denial and 4 taplands, and you now have 6 slots for better cards. Let’s put some actual thoughts in cuts instead.
While I like Hypnotic Sprite’s Adventure effect, it’s still a 3 mana counterspell, which is something I actively avoid in all decks. Counterspells for less mana got printed often enough, and the base 2/1 flying on it’s creature side doesn’t feel impactful enough. It also feels very weird finally having a precon again where you actually have enough interaction to the point some of it can be taken out or replaced by other/better effects. The Fae Dominion precon ‘only’ comes with 28 creatures, which is quite low compared to other typal decks, so I don’t want whatever limited creature slots I have available to just be a 2/1 creature.
Misleading Signpost makes for a neat trick, but you only get to reselect one creature. Sure, it’s a 3 drop mana rock with Flash that comes in untapped, so it’s not terrible, but looking at the rest of the ramp package, I’d rather have Pillar of Origins that colorfixes me for Faeries or a Thought Vessel which allows me to keep my hand more consistently, especially with the amount of draw present in the deck.
Most of the time you’re impacting your own battlefield just as much with Perplexing Test as you would with a regular board wipe , and as I’ve mentioned before, you don’t really rebuild as well as you’d expect. If you increase the amount of tokens you make or put Alela at the helm, you’re not going to want to wipe tokens, and if you’re looking to use the return nontokens part offensively, a true wipe is likely a better answer.
An argument can be made for returning your board to hand if someone else wipes, but this also means your opponents now have access to their cards in hand again, a lot of those which will potentially have better and more impactful enter the battlefield (ETB) effects than your own.
While I love removal spells that deal with more than one permanent, Reckless Spite has never been a great card to me. Especially with an increase in 3 color decks getting played, the targets you have seem to have reduced significantly over the years. The loss of 5 life can also mean that in tandem with Tegwyll’s mandatory card draw and lifeloss, you might not have 5 life to spare when the removal matters when you’re left in a low life total 1v1 situation. A removal spell you can’t cast because you can’t lose the life does not sound like something you want to keep in your 99.
Replacements
A reminder I’d put Alela at the helm and that’s what I’m gearing my changes towards. Faerie Mastermind made it to Chief’s top 10 Flash creatures article and rightfully so. In the precon it gives you another spell to cast at instant speed, and more importantly, it’s going to draw you cards on not your turn, which means you’ll be able to more consistently trigger Alela since you’ll draw into more spells with Flash or instants.
Faerie Harbinger is a limited tutor with flash that finds more Faerie friends! I’m not against suboptimal tutors in Battlecruiser, so long your legal to find targets aren’t consistently the same two or three cards. This effect can get reused with Hullbreaker Horror and copied with the creature doublers highlighted earlier, so I wouldn’t put it in the deck if I put more impactful or late game Faerie threats in as well. Limited tutors for not-so-great targets to keep the Battlecruiser mindset alive, we’re playing ‘Big Boat’ decks here 🚣♂️. If you got that reference, you’ve been on the server for more than three years.
In response, each opponent loses 1 life. Granted, Faerie Tauntings is a may ability, but let’s be honest, when are you going to not choose to do this? Over 25% of the deck can be played at instant speed, and in combination with Obyra, you’re now going to more quickly take life totals down to zero without having to actually commit your swings.
Glen Elendra Pranksters has the potential to save your important pieces. Any spell on the stack that targets a creature you really don’t want to lose can now be responded to with any of your instant or Flash spells. It can recycle some of your more impactful ETB cards like Puppeteer Clique or you can return Glen Elendra, Archmage back to hand to get rid of the -1/-1 counter and reuse her once more. Don’t you love sitting there with a smug grin on your face and all your mana open? It’s almost as if draw-go Faeries was a thing in Standard in the past.
Mistbind Clique is here to tap down your opponent’s lands. So you wanted to cast spells in your combat phase? You need untapped lands to do that though, sorry. Only Alela gets to play at instant speed ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Alela creates the token you need for the Champion ability too, so even if all you have is your commander on the field, this card will work.
Lastly, I’d find room for Counterspell and/or Negate and/or Countersquall. Keep your Arcane Denial far away from me, stop feeding cards to our opponents. I’m sure by now you don’t need to see a card image to know what these cards do.
Cards I would not add
I feel Bitterblossom is the most boring card to add to a Faerie deck, especially given the context of this precon. You don’t have ‘whenever a Faerie enters the battlefield’ triggers in the deck outside of Obyra and a singular 1/1 per entire turn rotation is likely not going to matter too much in an environment where 10/10 creatures with heaps of keywords stapled on them aren’t a rare sight but a regular occurrence.
Did I expect this to be in the precon once they revealed it was Faeries? Yes. Am I sad it’s not reprinted in the precon? No. Would I add this in a homebrew version of the deck for a different power level where large creature boardstates are less common? Maybe.
I’m not a fan of extra turns in Battlecruiser so I’m on the fence with Notorious Throng. In upgraded Anowon precons, it’s also one of the first cards people get asked to cut to keep the deck more in line with the speed of the average precon. I’m not saying if you only swap one card and keep the rest of the 99 cards unedited that you can’t run this card. I just wish this card existed without its extra turn clause for the Faerie Rogue token creation alone.
I feel in Battlecruiser you shouldn’t have a permanent advantage that enables your commander to operate with zero downsides whatsoever before anyone has even taken their turn, so I’m not adding Leyline of Anticipation. In a homebrew deck for Low or Mid sure, have at it. In BC, no thanks.
<Insert your go to Typal staples here> Boo, boring auto includes, what’s the point in playing EDH if every typal deck you build has the same 15 cards in them? Homogenization and the feeling our format is ‘solved’ or ‘too samey’ can only stop by changing the way we collectively approach decks. This includes you.
Virtue and Valor
New Commanders
Ellivere of the Wild Court creates a Virtuous Role token – which is a new Aura-related mechanic in WOE, more on that later – on ETB and on attack, and this ability is stronger than you might think. You’re essentially creating an All That Glitters token every time you cast your commander or attack with it.
Ellivere’s second ability draws you cards. I know I just went off about how card draw in the command zone is a boring design space, but close to all green and white enchantment related card draw has to do with enchantments entering or getting cast. I’m happy to see combat related card draw get printed for those people who don’t just play voltron Auras, but ‘go-wide enchantments’, which is exactly what this deck is trying to do.
Gylwain, Casting Director can pick and choose from three Role tokens on ETB, or whenever a nontoken creature ETBs. Out of all the potential commanders in the precon, Gylwain will give you the highest Aura count. Each nontoken creature that now enters the battlefield gets a free Aura on top, out of which Royal is probably the most annoying to deal with. I’m very happy he got worded the way that he did, or he’d immediately go infinite with Siona, Captain of the Pyleas, which is also in the precon.
Syr Armont, the Redeemer, also printed in the WOE standard set, creates a Monster Role token on ETB and gives enchanted creatures you control +1/+1. Out of all the new commanders in the deck, this one felt like the weakest. The trample often failed to impress with the largest bodies being Sun Titan or Realm-Cloaked Giant. And while their power and toughness could go higher up with several of the Auras provided in the deck, Syr Armont only ever creating one Role token hinders the deck’s game plans severely. You want to spread Auras around and create lots of enchantments, and you want to do this often and consistently because you rely on enchantment-related card draw and creature token creation. I wouldn’t put Syr Armont in the command zone in the boxed precon. Let’s finally talk about what exactly a Role token is.
Role tokens are the new mechanic we got in the WOE standard set. Roles are colorless Aura enchantment tokens that can give positive (or negative) abilities to a creature. I like their design because they’re limited to one role per creature, so instead of taking your best creature on board and loading it up with 15 Auras, you’re meant to spread these role tokens around on your battlefield. The standard set gets 6 role tokens in total: Cursed, Monster, Royal, Sorcerer, Wicker and Young Hero. The Virtue and Valor precon brings with it a 7th role token: Virtuous. That is, if you get your role tokens in your precon to begin with.
Time to go off on a tangent, prepare to click some links. Another product, another issue, which shouldn’t be the norm, yet here we are. How Magic consistently keeps having issues like this is beyond me. Text/spacing errors in Arm for Battle, two Mossfire Valleys in Upgrades Unleashed, normal cards being packaged with the tokens instead of the main deck in two Warhammer 40K decks, and those are just the ‘more common’ ones, on top of unique ones like miscut, double-sided or damaged collector booster sample packs. These are all issues from the last few years I could remember off the top of my head, so there’s bound to be more that I forgot about.
I used to buy one precon per precon cycle and lately that hasn’t been the case. I’m not spending my money on a product that can’t be guaranteed to be exactly what I paid for. I also don’t want to be told by Wizards Support that I have to ship the booster box I just bought from my LGS — full of ink-damaged and scratched up cards (3 seperate links) — from the EU to the USA and pay the shipping costs out of my own pocket before anything can be done about it, even though all EU Magic cards get printed 30 miles from my door. I’m not dealing with that again.
WOTC, do better. An increase in product getting printed and prices going up for consumers should not mean a decrease in quality control. Now that that’s out of my system, let’s get back to the Virtue and Valor precon.
Interesting New Cards
Move aside Rancor, there’s a new card in town and it’s called Giant Inheritance. It provides a flat +5/+5 and has an ‘on attack’ clause to give any one attacking creature +1/+1 and trample. While I assume most of the time the creature that has Giant Inheritance attached is going to be on the receiving end of the Monster Role token, it’s nice that you have the choice to target any other attacking creature as well. Also, Giant Inheritance returns to your hand in the case it gets removed, just like Rancor does. In case you haven’t caught on yet, this Aura turns any creature into a Colossal Dreadmaw on top. Look at what they need to do to mimic a fraction of its power!
Knickknack Ouphe – which also gets my award of ‘most letter K heavy word I’ve had to type in English so far’ – has a potential to get out of hand in your next green Aura voltron deck. ETB reveal your top X and put any number of Aura cards with mana value x or less directly on the battlefield. Dedicated green decks should have no issue casting an X value in the double digits so you get to dig quite deep. Enjoy your free Eldrazi Conscription and Colossification, I’m sure Thrun, Breaker of Silence really doesn’t mind.
If I had to limit myself to buying just one single from this set of precons it’d be Unfinished Business, for Light-Paws specifically. White has no lack of strong enter the battlefield effects, and it’s relatively easy to set up a chain reaction of reanimation with this card. Target Sun Titan or Heavenly Blademaster as the creature, and Swiftfoot Boots and Mantle of the Ancients as the Aura and Equipment, and watch your entire Aura graveyard enter your battlefield again on a very sizable body with hexproof and haste. Of note, the precon does not have Swiftfoot Boots or any other form of hexproof and haste on Auras or Equipment and this seems like a deliberate choice to prevent this exact scenario.
Favorite Boxed Line Of Play
A non-summoning sick Sun Titan with Pollenbright Wings, Giant Inheritance, and a Monster Role token swinging in for 12 damage and flashing in an Indomitable Might after your opponent struggled to figure out blockers is never not going to be funny.
Cuts
Out: Myriad Landscape and 4 basics. In: Generous Gift, Darksteel Mutation, Beast Within, Return of the Wildspeaker. Easy! Jokes aside, let’s get to the actually well thought out ones.
Realm-Cloaked Giant is a 5 mana board wipe or a 7 mana 7/7 with vigilance. That’s not amazing. You don’t synergize with Adventure cards, and while it’s true this giant has the highest power and toughness in the entire deck, the deck goes wide more than it goes tall. Even if it went tall, you have better options in white green.
What a weird card Loamcrafter Faun is. It makes little sense in this precon to me, especially given the lack of ‘green ramp lands to hand’ cards like Kodama’s Reach or Cultivate. If your hand is full of land, that likely means you put too many lands in your deck to begin with. This card truly seems to be designed because precons nowadays have nearly 40 lands in them by default.
I really don’t get why this card got printed, not just in this precon, but the card as a whole. Sure, putting cards from your graveyard in your hand over having a handful of land is better, but ‘if I get unlucky twice – good cards in the yard, and too many lands in hand – this card is useful’ is just a weird design space for me. It’s potentially useful in a homebrew Borborygmos Enraged deck I guess?
Land to hand in the world of bountiful land to field options feels a little off so I’m not a fan of Sylvan Ranger. Is this the synergy line they were hoping to achieve by turning Loamcrafter Faun into a regrowth? This card has been around since Magic 2011 and its age is starting to show.
Celestial Archon is another top-end card I’d likely take out. The Bestow cost is just too high compared to a card like Angelic Destiny, which is already in the precon. I understand it has a double use thanks to its regular 5 drop body option, but the deck is screaming for some better instant speed response options so we need to make room somewhere. With Celestial Archon and Realm-Cloaked Giant gone, the mana curve now also caps out at 6, not 7.
Replacements
The deck wants bodies to put auras on and Arasta of the Endless Web is another potential source of tokens, but I’m also aware this one is more of a potential meta pick than anything else. The Faerie precon is releasing at the same time, and while Battlecruiser usually isn’t the place where most people are playing at instant speed, that’s likely going to shift the next few months given the amount of instants and sorceries the Faerie precon has. The Hosts of Mordor is also a quite popular decks on the server, as is the Elven Council precon. Arasta should have no issues giving you a sizable board for the next few months.
I know, boo boring auto include, but I cut Cast Off and I’d like to keep the amount of boardwipes in the deck the same, so I’m adding Vanquish the Horde. This deck goes very wide, and it doesn’t have to rely on opponents to ensure it costs just 2 white mana to cast. White Blasphemous Act is just a very good card, and I’m happy this one hasn’t reached insane aftermarket prices (yet).
Let’s add both Helm of the Gods and Swiftfoot Boots. On one hand, absolute Timmy choices ‘to make Unfinished Business better’, on the other hand, two good equipment cards in a deck that’s very low on artifacts. Spreading out your threats is always a good idea, and if someone plays an enchantment or creature only boardwipe, due to having no artifacts to fall back on, you’re going to get behind on other players. Having just two artifacts in a deck doesn’t sit well with me.
The deck creates a lot of creature tokens and mostly relies on Auras and Role tokens to ensure those creature tokens aren’t just base 1/1s or 2/2s. Giving the entire board +1/+1 with Flowering of the White Tree on one of the cheapest mana value enchantments available seems very good. You also lean into the legendary creatures a lot in order to enable the deck, so having them get +2/+1 and ward 1, on top of the potential Role tokens they’re already going to have access to means they’ll survive for longer.
It’s worth mentioning that several instances of ward stack. If a creature has multiple instances of ward, each will trigger separately. A legendary creature with a Royal Role token and Flowering of the White Tree on the field will have ward 1, ward 1, two separate ward triggers your opponents have to pay 1 extra mana for if they want their spell to resolve. And even after they paid the ward costs, with their removal spell on the stack you can still Reprieve their spell. Try again!
Cards I would not add
Shielded by Faith goes infinite with Siona, Captain of the Pylea so that one’s quite obvious. The deck also has more than enough card draw, so there’s no need to add the missing enchantress cards either.
I think it goes without saying that Sphere of Safety likely makes it so Battlecruiser decks won’t be able to meaningfully interact with your deck at all.
I also think adding replacement and redundancy commanders such as Sythis, Harvest’s Hand and Calix, Guided by Fate feel like a boring cop-out, especially if you already have other enchantment-matter decks. Not every pizza you make has to be a Margherita, it’s OK to add some controversial pieces of pineapple sometimes, though Chief will likely disagree with this.
Chief: I just really dislike pineapple, okay? On everything.
End Step
Overall, I think this a fantastic precon cycle. I’m very happy to see a response-heavy blue-black deck that leans on a creature type haven’t really seen often before. While it’s still very much ‘flying.deck’ it doesn’t feel that way due to the options you have on not your turn. I would have loved to see more instant speed options in the green-white deck, but that might just be my personal preference.
I have two more articles lined up, the final ‘For One Mana’ article which I’ll write together with Chief, and the Summer League Battlecruiser winner article is also in the works. After that, I’m taking a month long break to go shop around for a house abroad so I can leave Belgium behind in the near future. I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Chief, Eliana, and whichever guest writers we bring on board in my absence.
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