I live to fight another day, as do all of my G/U decks, each of which has a Prophet of Kruphix and a Deadeye Navigator in it. That’s just how I roll. Surviving a swing of the ban-hammer, at least for another few months, makes me feel pretty happy. It would make Commander significantly less fun for me if my favorite cards were banned. I think Consecrated Sphinx is much more of a feel-bad card, and I see fewer calls for the Sphinx’s head. Still, calls for heads only matter to an extent, and the rules committee felt, as I do, that the format is healthy for now.

A possible answer presented itself when we were playing a pickup game at the shop after a Magic 2015 prerelease event and a brand new player asked me which precon I liked. Coincidentally, he had no idea I wrote this column; he was just asking me because it seemed that I knew what I was doing. As it happened, I have a very strong opinion about the Commander (2013 Edition) preconstructed decks. I am in favor of all of them, and if you’re just starting out, they are a great tool, and it’s not all that tough to make any one into a decent deck, 75% or otherwise. You want a way to end the arms race without having to ban something? How about encouraging players to build new decks without taking the old ones apart? Sure, you can drop $15 on a Consecrated Sphinx for each and every deck you build. But wouldn’t you rather do something a bit more creative?

Right out of the box, the preconstructed decks are fine. However, with tweaking, they can be serviceable 75% decks and can prevent the kind of arms-race scenario we’d all like to avoid. But is there an amount of tweaking that’s going to be too much?

/u/J3llo submitted what he calls a prototype for a 75% Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge deck that is built from the precon up. One unintended consequence of starting with a precon is that you automatically avoid one of the pitfalls of 75% deck-building, and that’s our aversion to taking a stronger deck and weakening it. Starting with the existing skeleton of a preconstructed deck means we’re automatically strengthening a weaker deck, and that’s where we want to be. Did he go too far though?

The original deck is here. Below is what /u/j3llo came up with.

Jeleva, Nephalia?s Scourge ? Commander | j3llo

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (12)
• 1 Clone
• 1 Consuming Aberration
• 1 Dack's Duplicate
• 1 Diluvian Primordial
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Phantasmal Image
• 1 Snapcaster Mage
• 1 Vesuvan Doppelganger
• 1 Vesuvan Shapeshifter
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
• 1 Venser, Shaper Savant

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Chandra Ablaze
• 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1 Liliana of the Dark Realms

• Spells (52)
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Dimir Charm
• 1 Fated Return
• 1 Griptide
• 1 Hero's Downfall
• 1 Hinder
• 1 Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1 Memory Lapse
• 1 Mystical Tutor
• 1 Reiterate
• 1 Spell Crumple
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Vampiric Tutor
• 1 Beacon of Unrest
• 1 Breaking // Entering
• 1 Bribery
• 1 Cruel Ultimatum
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Decree of Pain
• 1 Extinguish All Hope
• 1 Incendiary Command
• 1 Plague Wind
• 1 Pull from the Deep
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1 Rite of Replication
• 1 Spelltwine
• 1 Stolen Goods
• 1 Stolen Identity
• 1 Time Stretch
• 1 Whispering Madness
• 1 Windfall
• 1 World at War
• 1 Knowledge Exploitation
• 1 Dream Halls
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Coalition Relic
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Izzet Signet
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Mimic Vat
• 1 Omen Machine
• 1 Rakdos Signet
• 1 Sensei's Divining Top
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Strionic Resonator
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1 Sword of Light and Shadow
• 1 Talisman of Dominance
• 1 Talisman of Indulgence

• Lands (32)
• 4 Mountain
• 5 Swamp
• 6 Island
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Crosis's Catacombs
• 1 Gemstone Mine
• 1 Mana Confluence
• 1 Moonring Island
• 1 Opal Palace
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Shelldock Isle
• 1 Spinerock Knoll
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Buy This Deck

A lot of what he has done here is positive. Jeleva is a fun commander to go pseudo-Voltron with because you benefit so much from attacking with her, and she turns into a legitimate clock quickly. However, there are a few cards we don’t like to see in a 75% deck.

I have a tendency to dismiss the description of Commander as a pay-to-win format. While your mana base can be improved by throwing thousands at it to play Alpha–Revised dual lands and fetches or the like, it’s a bulk-rare format. No one is going to complain about /u/J3llo’s $30 Bribery, but they may take exception to a $0.50 Deadeye Navigator. Power is what matters here, and some of the most powerful spells are cheap at a store.

Is it ideal to have three Swords in a 75% deck? In many contexts, they’re $30 Lightning Greaves but for a narrow color range. In other contexts, they’re a beating, but most decks out there—even precons out of the box—can handle a bit of a beating. Sometimes, you put a Sword on a Birds of Paradise because the trigger is all that matters. That isn’t happening here—the Swords are to generate value with a Jeleva swing and maybe ensure she lives to swing again. Can we begrudge this? Not all of the money spent here is in service of making the deck too powerful. I think we can all agree Sensei's Divining Top needs to go.

Is this a perfect example of a 75% deck? No, I think it breaks a few of our rules—slightly—but it could easily make better card choices. However, even with cards such as Top, Vampiric Tutor, and Mystical Tutor, the deck seems pretty fair, and it seems to be a deck that won’t play the exact same way every time. It has a few cards, such as Bribery and Knowledge Exploitation, that I think are great for helping us scale our deck to the power level of our opponents’ decks, not to mention Jeleva’s own native abilities. I really like to see a card pulled from dollar-box obscurity, and Knowledge Exploitation is a card I’m impressed by in this deck.

All in all, this is a good demonstration of how a precon can be modified easily to make a very good example of a 75% deck. With a few more cards like Knowledge Exploitation and fewer cards like Sword of War and Peace, you can even say this demonstrates how to do it cheaply. Playing Time Stretch over Time Warp is 75% 101, and I like where this ended up. So, if someone brand new wanted to build his or her first Commander deck, or if a member of your group wanted to build something new to break up the monotony and declare a ceasefire in the arms race, what would you suggest?

I tell people I like Devour for Power. Whether you build with Prossh, Skyraider of Kher as your commander or with Shattergang Brothers or even with Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper, you have a lot to work with. Not only that, but I always have dozens of copies of the cards players need to next-level the deck—such as Butcher of Malakir, Dictate of Erebos, and Parallel Lives. Those players can jam Grave Pact and Doubling Season later if they want to, but these cheaper, functional alternatives are great ways to take the deck from passable to playable in a few brief trades.

Prossh, Skyraider of Kher ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (30)
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Brooding Saurian
• 1 Butcher of Malakir
• 1 Capricious Efreet
• 1 Charnelhoard Wurm
• 1 Deathbringer Thoctar
• 1 Deepfire Elemental
• 1 Endless Cockroaches
• 1 Fell Shepherd
• 1 Goblin Sharpshooter
• 1 Golgari Guildmage
• 1 Hunted Troll
• 1 Inferno Titan
• 1 Ophiomancer
• 1 Quagmire Druid
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Scarland Thrinax
• 1 Silklash Spider
• 1 Sprouting Thrinax
• 1 Stalking Vengeance
• 1 Stronghold Assassin
• 1 Terra Ravager
• 1 Viridian Emissary
• 1 Viscera Seer
• 1 Walker of the Grove
• 1 Wight of Precinct Six
• 1 Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
• 1 Hua Tuo, Honored Physician
• 1 Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper
• 1 Shattergang Brothers

• Spells (30)
• 1 Artifact Mutation
• 1 Burn at the Stake
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Dirge of Dread
• 1 Mass Mutiny
• 1 Restore
• 1 Tempt with Vengeance
• 1 Attrition
• 1 Beastmaster Ascension
• 1 Blood Rites
• 1 Curse of Chaos
• 1 Curse of Predation
• 1 Curse of Shallow Graves
• 1 Dictate of Erebos
• 1 Fecundity
• 1 Furnace Celebration
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Mind Slash
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Primal Vigor
• 1 Tooth and Claw
• 1 Vile Requiem
• 1 Widespread Panic
• 1 Armillary Sphere
• 1 Carnage Altar
• 1 Obelisk of Jund
• 1 Plague Boiler
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Spine of Ish Sah
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots

• Lands (39)
• 6 Swamp
• 7 Forest
• 7 Mountain
• 1 Akoum Refuge
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Golgari Guildgate
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Grim Backwoods
• 1 Gruul Guildgate
• 1 Jund Panorama
• 1 Kazandu Refuge
• 1 Khalni Garden
• 1 Llanowar Reborn
• 1 Opal Palace
• 1 Rakdos Guildgate
• 1 Rupture Spire
• 1 Savage Lands
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Vivid Grove
• 1 Kher Keep

Buy This Deck

This is a very quick and dirty deck that is a good example of a deck well on its way to 75% that can be accomplished for under $10. Everything I added is inexpensive—the most expensive cards I added was Dictate of Erebos, and I think that will fall in price before it inevitably goes back up. Warp World, Burn at the Stake, Parallel Lives, Dictate of Erebos, Artifact Mutation, Beastmaster Ascension, and Attrition are all very cheap rares and synergize very well with the deck. Cards such as Cultivate, Mind Slash, and Viridian Emissary are cards I have dozens of in my build boxes, and I’m happy to trade them out to people trying to build better decks.

What do you all think? Is the Jeleva deck 75% as-is or should we cut the cards I don’t like? How often do you build new decks? Have you ever taken an old deck apart to make a new one? Which precon, 2010 or 2013, would you recommend to a total beginner who wanted to spend $50 on a deck and have it be 75%? Leave the comments here or on reddit. Thanks for reading, and even if you forgot I said I’d do two decklists this week, I didn’t.