Upgraded Upgrades Unleashed - Chishiro, the Shattered Blade
The time for new cards and new decks is here! Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty has an array of new options for players to choose from. Whether it's adding new cards to Commander decks they already have, or creating whole new decks from the archetypes supported. For the Neon Dynasty Commander Decks, Wizards has decided to give special attention to Vehicles and the new Modified mechanic that appears in the main set. In this article we will be exploring some ways to upgrade the new Gruul deck: Upgrades Unleashed. Like with most precons, this deck is totally playable out of the box (as long as you replace the second copy of Mossfire Valley), but let's explore how we can tune this deck and make some upgrades of our own.
Upgrades
Most of the preconstructed decks have a few different themes and some cards that address them, but often feel very unfocused and can be a little frustrating sometimes to play out of the box. This deck has a little bit of an advantage over normal precons, as there are multiple ways we can satisfy the “Modified” condition. This will make upgrading the deck simpler as we don't have to completely focus on one archetype. So let's see how we can upgrade getting counters, equipment and auras on our Creatures.
We have a good selection of more recent cards that care about counters. Cards like Kodama of the West Tree and Avabruck Caretaker give us free value for basically playing our deck. Caretaker starts modifying our Creatures as soon as the turn we cast it, and then provides us protection AND more counters if we ever flip it. Kodama lets our modified Creatures get through and provides ramp. Incubation Druid offers us more ramp, and we don't even have to activate its Adapt ability most of the time. Verdurous Gearhulk and Vigor come down and provide even more counters and added protection from dying in combat. A couple noncreature options we have are Ruinous Intrusion and The Ozolith. Ruinous Incursion pulls double duty as an efficient removal spell and modifies our Creatures at the same time. The Ozolith is our deterrent from our opponents removing our Creatures. Being able to keep our counters and essentially saving our work for later is very strong in the long game.
Modifying our Creatures also includes equipping and attaching auras to them, so let's see what cards we can upgrade to. Two auto include Equipments for us are Lightning Greaves and Skullclamp. While the former protects our priority Creatures, the latter will be an excellent draw engine for us. Sword of the Animist and Sword of Hearth and Home will be important pieces for us to make sure we don't fall behind on our lands. Hearth and Home will also provide us with relevant protection and will let us blink any enter the battlefield triggers that will help us progress our strategy. A key equipment for us will be Sword of Truth and Justice as this will modify our Creatures, then proliferate our counters to make our threats even more threatening. Dowsing Dagger will provide us with more ramp once we flip it and Basilisk Collar will give us evasion for our Creatures.
Lastly, we need to modify our Creatures with some effective auras. Two key auras to play will be Hydra Growth and Pattern of Rebirth. Hydra Growth will make our enchanted Creature very large, very fast; while Pattern of Rebirth will be an excellent way to deter our opponent's from removing the enchanted Creature, or else face whatever engine we may find with the death trigger. Some other solid auras we will play are Rancor, Keen Sense, Canopy Cover and Verdant Embrace. These auras will help us draw cards, protect our pieces and put more bodies into play.
Cards to Cut
Now that we have all of our upgrades, let's see what cards we can take out of the preconstructed deck.
Whiptoungue Hydra: A very narrow board wipe and also costly at six mana.
Vastwood Surge: We don't want to spend eight mana on a ramp spell and modifying a Creature when we have cards like Kodama of the West Tree.
Bonehoard: Four mana equipment that is very dependent on Creatures in the graveyard.
Starstorm: While the cycling is nice, we want to be spending our mana on growing our Creatures and not removing them.
Goblin Razerunners: We have more efficient Creatures that put counters on themselves and not at the cost of a land.
Primeval Protector: Verdurous Gearhulk offers us a similar effect at a (for the most part) cheaper cost.
Collision of Realms: Seven mana to shuffle our entire board and get only one Creature in return is sub-optimal.
Kami of Celebration: Really wants us to cast cards from exile, but we have more efficient ways of drawing cards.
Tanuki Transplanter: Doesn't attack right away and costs too much mana for an effect that is ok at best.
Walking Skyscraper: Really just a big body that we can swap out for more ways to modify our Creatures.
Hunter's Insight: A nice combat trick, but doesn't help us progress our board and draw us cards like Skullclamp does.
Fireshrieker: Giving a Creature double strike for five mana isn't terrible, but we have Equipments that can progress our strategy a bit better.
Ordeal of Nylea: We have a much better ramp package that doesn't require us to sacrifice our modifications.
Agitator Ant: Goading our opponent's Creatures is good but if they ever remove this, they will have Creatures as big as ours, making it more difficult for us to get through.
Komainu Battle Armor: Three mana 2/2 with menace is not bad, but the reconfigure cost is steep and we can be more efficient with our equipment.
Silkguard: Avabruck Caretaker does a much better job at providing consistent counters and protection.
Sword of Vengeance: Six mana equipment that doesn't really help more than one Creature at a time.
Ox of Agonas: Draws us cards, but only puts the counters on itself if escaped. Also exiling eight cards from our graveyard is not always feasible.
Towashi Guide-Bot: We have much better and more efficient card draw and ways to put counters on our Creatures.
Elemental Mastery: Verdant Embrace does a better job of what this card wants to do.
With all these changes, our decklist could look something like this:
I'm glad to see this color pairing getting a new archetype. It lets players really customize how they want to play Red and Green. I hope this upgrade guide helps you get an idea of how you would like to raise the power level of this deck and focus the synergies presented in the precon!
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