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Path of Precons Frequent Flyers

Commander / EDH* WU (Azorius)

chickeneyebrows

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Creature (31)

Land (37)

Instant (10)

Sorcery (3)

Commander (1)

Commander: Inniaz, the Gale Force

Artifact (11)

Enchantment (7)

Maybeboard

Instant (2)

Creature (1)

Land (1)

My deck for our LGS "Path of Precons". This is an event over several months where we buy a cheap precon and use a £10 a month budget to make upgrades and playtest it at the shop against other players upgrading their precons.

I chose the new Commander Starter deck "First Flight" which is an Azorius Flyers deck with Isperia, Supreme Judge as the commander. All the cards in the deck are reprints and it is aimed at newcomers to Commander so there aren't many complicated mechanics or keywords.

I picked the deck as I don't currently have any Azorius decks, flyers are a sound choice for their evasion, and the commander has the three most powerful words in Magic ("draw a card")!

In the first couple of sessions with the deck I'll be playing it unmodified but will use the Maybeboard for my proposals for the month's upgrades (bearing in mind they must total £10 or less).

My first thoughts looking at the deck straight out of the box:

  • The deck has a ridiculous amount of card draw - as well as the commander there are burst draw spells, other creatures that draw and things like Bident of Thassa which draw when you connect, something that is going to happen often with flyers. I counted around 14 cards contributing to card draw.
  • There is only one card that allows for an unlimited hand size (Thought Vessel), so with all that draw it would be wise to have one or two other options like Reliquary Tower or Decanter of Endless Water.
  • The card draw and the colours of the deck lend themselves to a control style of play, and this can be seen with the counterspells and interaction included in the deck.
  • There aren't that many flying creatures (I counted 24); they have reduced the creatures to fit in the control-style cards so it may be hard to pull together a strong enough board state for a win. However, the control cards can help maintain a board state, e.g. by countering a board wipe
  • A few of the creatures produce token flyers so this does enable a better board state if you have them in play
  • Number of lands is spot on, 39 seems a little high but the commander costs 6 to cast and there are some big CMC Sphinx creatures. The lands plus ramp total needs to be one card higher as it isn't quite 50 which is the optimum. There are only eight mana rocks and the Cartographer's Hawk and Pilgrim's Eye. White and blue aren't the best colours for ramp and the cards I could add in those colours don't really synergise well with the deck. Given the amount of card draw I will probably try to find a ramp card that lets me put additional lands into play from my hand.
  • The commander has quite a high CMC so it is going to be vital to consistently make land drops and ramp enough to recast it several times if necessary. This is the main source of card draw so until I can get it online I will be leaning on the other card draw sources.
  • Some of the lands that I'd expect to be in there are not, such as Azorius Chancery and Myriad Landscape
  • There is only one piece of graveyard hate (Remorseful Cleric) and no real graveyard recursion.

Although I need to play the deck a few times to check my assumptions I would say my first priorities are probably going to be:

  • Add in more cards to allow unlimited hand size
  • Add in more dual lands to replace some of the basics. Add in some ramp type lands such as Myriad Landscape and Azorius Chancery.
  • Add in a couple of cards that reward you for drawing multiple cards per turn or having a large hand size
  • Look at a suitable mana rock or white/blue ramp card to make the land + ramp total up to 50
  • Look at upping the number of flying creatures by two or three, particularly looking for creatures that create flying tokens
  • Look at whether there are weaker flyers in the deck that I could swap out or interaction cards that could be cut for creatures

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