“Control yourself, take only what you need from it.”
Art:Saheeli, Radiant Creator by Ernanda Souza
Table of Contents
Welcome to Aetherdrift! We are starting off strong with Budget upgrades for all of the precons and all of them are under $10! I have loved precons for a really long time, they are a great opportunity for new players to get into the game, can provide key reprints for existing players, and being able to play them out of the box can help a ton with getting players into the game with minimal investment. Precons are a blast to play and pilot and overall just push a lot of positivity into the community all of my group got our starts on precons; shoutout Nahiri, the Lithomancer! Upgrading pre-cons was pretty much the first step after we played a few rounds with our newly acquired precons. Without further ado, let’s get it!
Original Living Energy Precon Decklist:
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Original Living Energy Precon!
Add and Drop Budget Upgrades:
Please note: All prices are from TCGPlayer.com (If you want to support our site you can use this affiliate link!) All prices are current as of 2/3/25; they are, of course, subject to change!
Below are all of the changes we have made!
Add: Drop:
Gonti's Aether Heart is quite cheap coming at around $1.00
With such a cheap price tag I’m kind of shocked that they didn’t include Gonti's Aether Heart
Add:
Behemoth of Vault 0
Elder Gargaroth can be a nice utility piece for the deck, but overall, it doesn’t help further the gameplan that much, I prefer a much more direct energy approach, and I am a big fan of making copies of Behemoth of Vault 0
Add:
Wurmcoil Engine is absolutely nasty in this deck, while it doesn’t provide energy being able to copy it and get its death triggers can help us build up our board quite a bit and allow us to be very dominant in combat, I cut Duplicant
Wurmcoils can be a little pricey, averaging around 9-10 dollars.
Add:
Stone Idol Generator is a powerhouse in this deck; while I rarely care about the token creation ability, their first ability can net us a ridiculous amount of energy and help us always be able to trigger Saheeli or dump energy into whatever we want to. I was able to produce a crazy amount of energy with this card, and overall, it made the game plan a lot smoother. I don’t like Conjurer's Closet
Add:
Determined Iteration is so good in this deck, allowing us to make an additional token copy of one of our Saheeli tokens can get especially crazy when we copy something with a great ETB or death trigger since we are already running the superior Blasphemous Act
Copies of Determined Iteration
Add:
HELIOS One
Copies of HELIOS One
Add:
Arcane Denial is a great card, there is no doubt, but in this deck and with our heavy focus on energy, I think that Electrosiphon
Copies of Electrosiphon
Add:
The Motherlode is a very interesting card for the deck, against a deck full of non-basics, it can be an absolute powerhouse, because of the large number of non-basics within the format,t this card ranges from insane against certain decks to pretty good against most decks, being able to take out a strong Triome or utility land can be very valuable. Retrofitter is cool but not a card I’m really in love with; I’m not a huge fan of the Thopter package at all in this deck, and while a lot of the cards that also produce Thopters are pretty good, I am not a big fan of retrofitter!
Copies of The Motherlode, Excavator
Add:
We have more than enough mana-fixing in this deck, so I don’t think that Solemn is super strong in this deck, Blaster Hulk on the other hand, is an absolute powerhouse for this deck, it can be super cheap in this deck, and we can trigger its ability with ease, this is a great crowd-control card and allows us to maintain a strong board presence and destroy a few small creatures or a couple bigger creatures.
Copies of Blaster Hulk
Our upgraded decklist:
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Living Energy Precon with Upgrades!
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! This deck has been a blast to test and move some pieces around; I love being able to make this deck considerably stronger for a very small monetary investment! Magic doesn’t have to be expensive to be good or strong! While this deck certainly be a world-beater, it’s great at precon levels or a couple of levels above. Stay tuned and TAP IN!