Precon Reviews & Gameplans

Hey there!

In this article we’ll be going over the four precons we are going to be upgrading and guiding for 2025-2026. All four of these precons have been out for a while now and there are a ton of useful cards that have come out since their release! In future articles and videos we'll go over the first month $15 dollar upgrades as well as see if there are any new cards that fit in the decks with each set that releases. This article will serve as a primer for all four of the precons going over what they are trying to do right out of the box, what they could be doing better, and going over the general direction we will be taking them in. 

Growing Threat from March of the Machine (2023)

General Review

The only way to begin is by beginning so lets start with who our first commander is and what it can do! Brimaz, Blight of Oreskos, is everyone’s favorite cat man from the Greek inspired plane of Theros who has unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you ask) been turned into a phyrexian, or “compleated” As such, he very much cares about phyrexian creatures, and as a bonus, also cares about artifact creatures! Whenever you cast a Phyrexian creature or an artifact creature spell you can incubate X where X is equal to the spell’s mana value. And at the beginning of EACH end step, if a Phyrexian died under your control that turn, you can proliferate. For the new magic players and a refresher for experienced players, incubate is a mechanic where you get a Phyrexian Incubator artifact token with +1/+1 counters on it equal to the incubate value. You can then pay 2 mana to turn the token into a 0/0 phyrexian creature and it keeps the counters it had on it! Counters matter in this deck as when the Phyrexians die, you can proliferate which means you can pick any permanents with counters on them and add another one of those kinds of counters to it. So the general high level game plan is to cast your commander, cast a bunch of big Phyrexians or artifact creatures to get big Incubator tokens, and grow them through proliferation.

The Good and The Bad

There is no perfect deck and every precon does some things very well while lacking in other areas. This deck executes the game plan very well and features a lot of large Phyrexians to make the most out of Brimaz’s cast trigger. The only problem is that a lot of the phyrexians are too big to reasonably cast in the game. There is a ton of artifact ramp included, but in commander you generally want your 5 and 6 mana spells to be huge and impactful. And you want your 7+ mana spells to be game changing and/or game ending. A lot of the larger creatures in the deck are just good, but not incredible like you need them to be. Of the 32 creatures in the deck, 13 have a mana value of 6+. Meaning you can’t really cast a third of your creatures until turn 6 in a game that usually ends around turn 10. There aren’t even any creatures with cmc 1 or 2 which is definitely something we want to fix in the upgrade plan. Instead of trying to get in with one or two large incubator tokens, we want to try and get in with a bunch of little incubator tokens and proliferate them when one or more of them die.

New Direction

As with most precons, there is usually a sub theme that loosely lines up with the main theme and just gets in the way. In this case there is an artifact/value sub-theme that takes very useful slots away from the main strategy. We’ll be trimming those cards and replacing them with cards that focus on making as many incubator tokens as possible and cards that can let us sacrifice them away to proliferate as much as possible. We’ll also be doubling down on smaller phyrexians that we want to have die to proliferate the smaller incubator tokens. 

Hail, Caesar from Universes Beyond: Fallout (2024)

General Review

Hail, Caesar is a powerhouse of a precon that swarms the board with tokens and synergies from all of the legendary creatures. Caesar, Legion’s Emperor has an attack trigger that let’s you do two of the following three things:

• Create two 1/1 red and white Soldier creature tokens with haste that are tapped and attacking.

• You draw a card and you lose 1 life.

• Caesar deals damage equal to the number of creature tokens you control to target opponent.

The best part of this ability is that you don’t need to attack with Caesar. As long as you attack you’ll get the abilities. That third ability is a built-in game closer so this deck wants a ton of token makers. During the beginning and mid game, you want to gum up the board with creatures and creature tokens for defense. In the late game you can bring out Caesar to refill your hand and nuke your enemies one at a time.

The Good and The Bad

This deck comes with a ton of legendary creatures that come with really cool synergies but just like almost any other precon, the subtheme (legendary creatures) gets in the way of the main theme (token generation.) More than other precons, there are easy cuts and replacements to get this deck making a couple of tokens each turn. The only other drawback to the deck is that as it stands right out of the box, it is very commander dependent. There’s not enough token generation to win the game at a fast enough pace, and there’s not enough ways to buff the tokens to close out the game. That leaves Caesar and his third attack ability as the main way of finishing the game.

New Direction

It is a focused direction more-so than a new direction. We are keeping the commander’s third ability as our win-con but we want to get there in a faster and more explosive manner. We’ll be taking out most of the legendary creatures (and saving them for some other brews) while replacing them with some of the fastest and most efficient token generators we can get our hands on. We’ll also be replacing all of the cards that serve to pump our tokens with counters or anthem effects. We don’t need to make any of the tokens large and frightening since we’ll only ever want to attack with one or two tokens at a time. This lets us hoard creature tokens to make Caesar’s third ability more powerful.

Mishra’s Burnished Banner (2022)

General Review

This deck can get out of control very quickly if Mishra, Eminent One comes out and is not dealt with immediately. Mishra reads “At the beginning of combat on your turn, create a token that's a copy of target noncreature artifact you control, except its name is Mishra's Warform and it's a 4/4 Construct artifact creature in addition to its other types. It gains haste until end of turn. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.” Getting a token copy of almost any artifact, even if temporarily, can accrue crazy value. A bunch of the artifacts have ETB triggers to draw cards so your hand is never really empty. And if you’re not for drawing cards, you could also just copy your mana rocks if you need to cast more spells. 

The Good and The Bad

This deck is all about maximizing value with Mishra. And that’s the main problem, it’s very Mishra dependent. The value engine comes from having free copies of artifacts and there’s not many other ways in the deck to generate that value. There are some other creatures in the deck that can help close out the game but it is really centered around Mishra. Since “artifacts” is a pretty wide net for a strategy, there’s not really a second theme that gets in the way of you making artifact copies. The only other rough thing about this precon out of the gate is that there is no real finisher to the deck. There’s 4 - 5 top end flyers that can grind the game out if no one is interacting with them, but besides that, you’re just trying to out-value your opponents and get to a critical mass of artifacts. 

New Direction

If the plan is around Mishra's ability, we are going to double down. We’ll add in some new mana rocks to make sure we get Mishra out as fast and as frequently as possible if he’s removed. We’ll also add in some ways to get even more value from our copied temporary artifacts. We will have to find a balance between creatures and non-creature artifacts in this deck since Mishra can only make 1 temporary creature copy a turn. 

Living Energy from March of the Machine (2025)

General Review

Energy, energy, energy this deck is all about getting as much energy as possible and sinking it into some powerful abilities. One of the most powerful abilities in the deck definitely comes from the commander, Saheeli, Radiant Creator. It reads “ Whenever you cast an Artificer or artifact spell, you get an energy counter,” and it also has “At the beginning of combat on your turn, you may pay 3 energy. When you do, create a token that's a copy of target permanent you control, except it's a 5/5 artifact creature in addition to its other types and has haste. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.” This is similar to the Mishra, Eminent One’s ability but the major difference is that Saheeli lets you pick any permanent you control. Meaning you can animate a land, a noncreature permanent like artifacts and enchantments, or even make 5/5 versions of creatures with cool ETB effects. The whole point of the deck is to copy things that will net you more energy and then eventually find some of the closers to sink your mana into and finish the game up. 

The Good and The Bad

The deck is pretty solid but out of the box is definitely one of the weaker precons. It takes some time to get going and can really suffer without some key cards. Playing a deck focused around energy is almost like playing a deck with two themes. Theme one is gathering energy counters and theme two is spending them. They are only useful when spent on something so just generating a ton of energy won’t win you a game. Likewise, the deck can stall out if you have a bunch of energy payoffs and no energy to sink into them. The other trouble is the lack of general support. Energy is a very thematic mechanic only present in a handful of sets. If we want energy specific cards we are going to have a small pool to pull from including Aetherdrift, Kaladesh, Fallout, and a small feature in Modern Horizons 3. Even with all of this stacked up against the deck I believe we can still make it a force to be reckoned with by upgrading it with meaningful copy targets.

New Direction

The new theme we’re going in on is efficiency. We want to trim the higher mana value spells for more efficient ways to get and spend energy. While it is fun to cast a 7 mana leviathan or a 7 mana lizard it’s just not the kind of game ending threat we want to be dealing with. This deck also has had a weird problem with mana where in goldfishing there were always two colors and almost never the third color of mana available. Fixing the mana base will also be a priority.

Wrap-up

And that’s the intro for each of the four decks! I’ll be reaching out to my local playgroup to get some games in with all four in the same pod. I’ll report back with some of the best interactions and plays. I am still in the process of getting a space and gear to record a full table’s gameplay. So be on the lookout for that!

Thank you so much everyone for reading this article here on Precon Playground! For more content like this please head over to my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PreconPlayground. I'll be putting up the first round of upgrades into a video and posting it there. You can also support via all my social media accounts for more precon and MtG content in general: https://linktr.ee/preconplayground

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