“Clock hands shake, but they never move.“
Art:Mondrak, Glory Dominus
by Jason A. Engle
Table of Contents
The Mardu Surge deck got a lot better with some minor budget upgrades, but it is not even close to how good we can make this deck with our non-budget upgrades. Token decks, in general, have a lot of very strong high-end cards that can change the decks a lot. Today, we will be adding those with no budget considerations. Now, it is worth noting that you absolutely can run the budget version of this deck and be perfectly fine, but if you have a little extra cash to spend or already own any of these cards, these are very strong upgrades for the deck. Without further ado, let’s get it!
Our Precon Decklist so Far (With Budget Upgrades):
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Mardu Surge Precon Decklist With Budget Upgrades!
Non-Budget Upgrades for our Deck:
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Mondrak, Glory Dominus range from 30 to 40 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
Mondrak is obviously an insane card for this deck; it allows us to pump out tokens at a ridiculous rate, and with cards like Impact Tremors
already in the deck, this card is just bonkers. Not a ton to say about Mondrak except that they are extremely strong in the deck. I decided to cut Gix because I don’t feel like they interact very well with the overall game plan. Giving our opponents cards can spell disaster for us, and their secondary ability just doesn’t help that much. I think this is a no-brainer cut.
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Charismatic Conqueror range from 15 to 20 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
Charismatic Conqueror feels like a Smothering Tithe
/Rhystic Study
style card in how much it can annoy your opponents, and lucky for us we are able to produce a a crazy amount of tokens with this, Conqueror can accelerate the gameplan a lot and fill our board and trigger all of the payoffs in our deck, I decided to cut Chittering Witch mostly because they are just not great token production for the deck and their sac ability is a bit underwhelming, especially since we are running far better sac outlets like Viscera Seer
.
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Purphoros, God of the Forge range from 15 to 20 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
I don’t think I need to explain just how busted Purph is in this deck, it allows us to engage with our opponents outside of combat and deal a ton of damage, this does give us a ton of heat from our opponetns but with how much token production we have allows us to be very strong against this. This is a great card for our deck. The main reason I cut Goldlust Triad is that I don’t really care about the treasure tokens. The deck is quite explosive as is, and it really doesn’t add that much to further the overall game plan.
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Anointed Procession range from 50 to 70 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
I know that I’m becoming a broken record at this point, but more tokens are always good! Anointed Procession is cheap and efficient and just allows us to spam out a ridiculous amount of tokens onto the board. This is for sure a really pricey upgrade, but it is very good. I cut Idol of Oblivion because, in my opinion, it is quite a bad card. I understand why it’s in the precon, but it’s an extremely easy cut. Idol is just bad here; we have far better sources of card draw within the deck.
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Grave Pact range from 10 to 20 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
We make a lot of tokens, and subsequently, a lot of our tokens die. Because of that, we can take full advantage of the grave pact; this is a very easy way for us to absolutely decimate opponents’ boards and really take full control of the game. Blade of Selves is kind of a tough cut but compared to the rest of the deck I think its the right one, Blade of Selves is good but there are not a ton of creatures we want to myriad, its just not as immedialty good as grave pact is, I think grave pact is the far better card in this deck by far.
Our Final List:
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