Modern Horizons 3 has blessed us with support for an archetype that has been quite popular over the years, despite its lack of regular new cards: Energy. Savvy readers like you might be thinking “Hey, didn’t we just get a commander deck related to Energy from the Fallout set?” That we did dear reader, and I think it’s pretty awesome that we got that much support for this archetype in a short time frame. If you wanted to, you could cobble both decks together to make a really fun and unique brew: as a fan of Universes Beyond, this would be the route I would take, and the data from sites like EDHrec shows that going that direction is the common choice by players. However, I think that part of the great advantage of having a within universe commander deck focused on Energy is to cater to the players who aren’t as interested in Universes Beyond themes, but still want to take a crack at the sweet goodies you can play with in an Energy deck.
My goal with this Precon upgrade is to only stick to using cards that are not Universes Beyond cards, as well as sticking to a reasonable budget for upgrades. We’re going to stick with the face commander today: Satya, Aetherflux Genius. Satya has a super powerful ability that generates a token copy of a creature we control when they attack, as well as 2 Energy. The token will go away at the end of the turn unless we pay its mana cost in Energy. This is pretty fantastic, as it means we can both generate crazy value and Energy just from having creatures on the board, and we can either use that energy to grow our board state even more or just let the creature token die off and stockpile energy for other cards!
This deck comes with a bit of an artifact subtheme: in part due to the Kaladesh theme of the commander as well as the nature of the original cycle of Energy support cards released, but you’ll notice as you thumb through the list that there aren’t really any explicit artifact synergies within most of the new support pieces or even our commander themselves. I plan to lean hard into this mindset and remove most of the “true” artifact support. The deck should play more like an Energy/Populate Token deck rather than an artifact creature deck like you might expect. Our main win condition is easy: Beatdown. We’re really in it for the value game here, since we’re just going to use energy to pay off our token-copy-debt and get a stupid amount of powerful creatures just for casting normal cards. Our backup win condition is to go over-the-top with burn abilities from cards like Blaster Hulk. Since this means we’re going to struggle a bit with things that lock us out of attacking, we make sure to pack enough versatile removal to handle any cards that might stop us from bringing the heat.
Here’s the original precon decklist.
Cuts:
We’re going to be giving 18 nonland cards the axe in addition to 4 of the lands.
- Silverquill Lecturer is a terrifying prospect for a deck that wants to copy actually good cards.
- We’re cutting out a few of the 3 mana-cost ramp pieces that only generate one color of mana. They don’t really provide enough utility for being more expensive and restrictive on color generation. We’re ditching Coalition Relic, Hourglass of the Lost, Coveted Jewel, Midnight Clock, and Burnished Hart. I quite like Midnight Clock, but it takes a bit too much finesse to really make the best use of it.
- Confiscation Coup isn’t really worth the cost, especially since we have a new card that I think one-ups it.
- Scurry of Gremlins isn’t the worst, but I think it’s a bit expensive for what it does at 4 mana.
- Era of Innovation, Angel of Invention, and Goldspan Dragon are all solid cards in their own right, but they don’t really synergize with what we’re trying to do here.
- Combustible Gearhulk isn’t as big and scary of a copy target as we’d like, so we’re going to cut him for something way more ominous.
- Grenzo, Havoc Raiser is best with a really wide board, and while we sometimes can get a decent sized board, it’s nowhere near enough to really be making the best of this guy.
- Aethersphere Harvester, Tezzeret’s Gambit, & Filigree Racer aren’t bad for the archetype, but they lack what we’re looking to do with our specific commander.
- Austere Command sometimes is a bit too specific in the groups it wants to hit: we generally will end up losing some stuff to most of the modes unless we’re really in the gutter. We’re going to cut this and replace it with some more powerful removal cards that are slightly less flexible.
For lands, we’re chopping Azorius Chancery and Izzet Boilerworks on top of 2 Plains.
Adds:
In general, we’re looking to fill some gaps in three categories.
- Removal, Draw, and Ramp
- Generous Gift, Sunfall, Arcane Denial (counterspells are basically removal), and Vandalblast will give us a more well rounded removal package. Obviously, Sunfall is only really good if we’re behind, but since that’s the case for most white sweepers, we might as well bring one that goes pretty nuclear.
- For ramp, we’re going to slot in the three colored signets to help our ramp package be a bit faster and have some color fixing: Boros Signet, Azorius Signet, & Izzet Signet. They’re tried and true, it’s hard not to like ’em.
- Idol of Oblivion will help with some nice, consistent draw. We have a pretty good amount in the base deck, and while we definitely could go for more, we should be able to comfortable maintain a decent grip of cards.
2. Energy Synergy
We’re primarily looking for two things here: cards that either provide a way of generating a good chunk of extra Energy to play with, or good payoffs to dump our excess energy into.
- Volatile Stormdrake is my preferred card in the slot of Confiscation Coup. It’s significantly cheaper and provides the option to use it effectively as a removal spell rather than stealing something if you’re short on mana or Energy.
- Electrostatic Pummeler is a finisher for when you have a stupid amount of energy and nothing to do with it but durdle.
- Riddle Gate Gargoyle can be handy for lifelink in a pinch, but the real value is as an Energy generator, since we can just make copies of it off Satya’s trigger for a combined 5 Energy, just for attacking!
- Phyrexian Ironworks isn’t a flashy card, but both parts of it will be really handy for generally accumulating and spending Energy. It’s a workhorse value piece that will rarely eat targeted removal, which is always a plus in my book.
- Guide of Souls is a sweet new piece that lets us give Satya and a bit more reliable evasion to attack safely as well as help our endless quest for:
3. Token Synergy & Copy Targets
Here’s some of the spicy stuff. Since we already have a ton of ways to interact with Energy, we can spend some slots powering up the actual copies we’re planning to make as well as provide some juicy options of creatures to copy.
- Remember how I mentioned we needed something big and scary? Terror of the Peaks. There’s most of our budget, but boy it’s worth it.
- Neyali, Suns’ Vanguard is one of my favorite hidden tech pieces here. Since we already are making tokens that come in attacking, Neyali will help them punch harder and give us more card advantage just for sitting on board. What more could you want?
- Muster the Departed gives us a nice way to double down on some of our tokens: we can trigger Morbid by letting our token die off and can just get an extra copy of one we made on a previous turn.
- Nesting Dovehawk might not get as huge as it would in a go-wide token deck, but reliable populate triggers will be nice for when we want to keep copies around. This is another 10 dollar card at the time of writing, and I think this is a pretty flexible slot: if you have another synergistic card you want to play around with, I’d throw it in here.
- Rootborn Defenses gives us a bit of protection with a side order of Populate.
- Atsushi, the Blazing Sky is my final secret tech card: this card is really fantastic to copy and just let die. You get two energy from the bargain that you won’t have to spend right away, and on top of that you can pick between more cards or more mana. Having an endless stream of these to throw at people is going to get tough to deal with quickly.
For lands, we’re going to throw in the cycle of Clifftop Retreat, Sulfur Falls, and Glacial Fortress, since we still have quite a few basics to make these decently reliable. Overall, this gives a solid manabase for a deck at this price point: the default manabase in the precon is quite solid!
That’s a wrap! Feel free to let us know if you play this deck or choose to take it in a different direction.
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