Upgrading Bedecked Brokers

Posted on May 4, 2022

With Streets of New Capenna comes several new Commander precons. This isn't just the normal two or three that come with a set release nowadays, but rather it's a full set of five! This is basically what usually became known as the annual Commander release - effectively Commander 2022 - and as such we get five whole decks representing each of the five families of the gangster world. We have Bedecked Brokers, Obscura Operation, Maestros Massacre, Cabaretti Cacophony, and Riveteer Rampage making up the five decks.

As has become customary over the last year or so, I'm going to be spending the next couple weeks talking about each deck and finding cool ways to upgrade them! There's a whole ton this time around, so we'll no doubt have a ton to talk about. This week I'm starting out with the Bedecked Brokers precon and boy is this one a doozy.

This deck was honestly extremely interesting to work around. Perrie is a really cool commander to build around and also happens to be a pretty great character in the New Capenna story as well. The thing that got me, though, was his ability. The whole thing with the Brokers family was more about just shield counters, so it felt admittedly a bit odd that it would focus on a variety of counters as seen here. How does it stack up? Let's check the precon list and see!

Bedecked Brokers Precon | Commander | Wizards of the Coast

Commander (1)
1 Perrie, the Pulverizer

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Ajani Unyielding

What you have here is a pretty great deck. The core theme is extremely well represented with all kinds of counter stuff going on that can make Perrie come through for some massive damage. What's more, the greater package is actually pretty excellent for a newer player. It's not playing with much complexity beyond there being a ton of different tokens - something that's aided by the punch-out counters that come with the deck - and it's fairly easy to play. Your lines are straightforward and you're not trying to set up some crazy madness like it was a preconstructed storm deck or something.

In terms of upgrades, though, I'm not going to lie to you: working with this deck was a chore. It was like a giant puzzle where you have to find out what counters work best and which ones don't. There's just so many different kinds out there and some are better than others. It's harder than Volo was, too. Creatures having multiple types made it harder to have a lot of overlap and it was usually obvious the two or three general creatures that you wanted. That tended to make choices fairly simple and easy. With three colors here, though, and a myriad of unique counter options with their own quirky abilities, it gets a lot more challenging.

To start, I went through and compiled a list of counters from cards that already existed in the main deck. Here's what I came up with:

-0/-1 Counters (Wall of Roots)

-1/-1 Counters (Devoted Druid, Wickerbough Elder)

+1/+1 Counters (several cards)

Ability Counters (Crystalline Giant, Agent's Toolkit, etc.)

Brick Counters (Oracle's Vault)

Charge Counters (Vivid lands, Everflowing Chalice, Gavel of the Righteous)

Fate Counters (Oblivion Stone)

Feather Counters (Aven Mimeomancer)

Hoofprint Counters (Hoofprints of the Stag)

Hour Counters (Midnight Clock)

Loyalty Counters (Ajani Unyielding)

Shield Counters (Contractual Safeguard, Family's Favor, etc.)

Not counting Crystalline Giant madness, you can ultimately get about 17 different counters if you play cards right. A lot of these are pretty standard options with +1/+1 counters, charge counters, loyalty counters, and shield counters. Things get interesting when you look beyond that, though. It's not common that you see Feather Counters or Hoofprint Counters on cards, and Fate Counters being used for things other than just setting up an Oblivion Stone explosion is especially intriguing.

I really wanted to lean in on this a little bit more and see what kinds of oddball counters could be pulled up and put to good use in a deck like this. What's great is that the precon itself is actually great out of the box without very many adjustments, which means that it's not hard to find what works for you and what doesn't and make adjustments as you want. The majority of cards that create all these unusual counters tend not to be that rare and expensive and odds are actually pretty good that you've got some lying around in boxes or binders yourself.

Some newer ones you might think of, for example, include cards like Ominous Seas (foreshadow counters), Faithbound Judge // Sinner's Judgment (judgment counters), Strixhaven Stadium (point counters), any planeswalker (loyalty counters), sagas (lore counters), and so on. At the end of the day, it's just determining what works for you, as well as determining if the cards themselves are worth running at all. I actually made a pretty lengthy spreadsheet to determine a ton of the various counter types and I have to say there were a lot of great ones. But for every great one there was something like an Archery Training (arrow counters), Fylgja and Ursine Fylgja (healing counters), and Component Pouch (component counters). They're not the worst options, but there's enough actually decent affordable options that I just can't imagine a world where you'd actually want them.

Ultimately, these were the counter types I settled on to add into the mix:

Acorn Counters (Chitterspitter)

Divinity Counters (That Which Was Taken)

Growth Counters (Simic Ascendancy)

Harmony Counters (Instrument of the Bards)

Isolation Counters (Quarantine Field)

Level Counters (Enclave Cryptologist)

Lore Counters (Scroll of the Masters)

Night Counters (Replicating Ring)

Spore Counters (Utopia Mycon)

Storage Counters (Calciform Pools, Saltcrusted Steppe)

Training Counter (Sensei Golden-Tail)

Some of these just seemed like slam dunks. It's almost a surprise that the deck doesn't have a single card with level counters, lore counters, or storage counters. Heck, the latter of those especially - storage counters - is just such an easy add with the two on-color Time Spiral lands over some of the deck's other options that it begs the question why they're not here over some of the other mediocre options. Like, I'm sorry, but Myriad Landscape has pretty diminishing returns in a three color deck and you could probably go without a Temple or a Shadows/Strixhaven land in favor of these more on-theme options. Thankfully, they're some of the easiest swaps with the storage lands costing pennies thanks in part to Time Spiral Remastered.

Now that we've talked about the counters a bit, let's look at a list and see the changes at work:

Bedecked Brokers Revamped | Commander | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Perrie, the Pulverizer

Admittedly, once I narrowed down the list of options for new counters to add, the real challenge became making the cuts. After all, the precon that already existed was actually pretty rock solid. You could take it to a game night with friends and have a great time, but we're in the business of upgrades so changes must be made.

Normally, some of the first things I'd change - apart from the lands - would be to add in some more essentials. A little more spot removal, countermagic, artifact and enchantment removal, and some board wipes. As it happens, a lot of that's covered pretty well here for the most part. There's a bunch of artifact and enchantment removal, several board wipes, and even a little general removal with cards like Bant Charm and Generous Gift. As such, I just tossed in a couple general spells like Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Counterspell, and Dovin's Veto just to get a little more in there. I did also remove Brokers Charm and Planar Outburst because they just didn't seem like the best fits here as they might seem at first glance.

In fact, it's almost just easier to talk about what I ended up actually removing rather than what I put in. After all, the majority of additions were the aforementioned new counter cards or were better versions of existing ones (i.e. better planeswalkers). A couple were ones I simply found better options for. It felt like there was a little too much proliferate where a lot of the counters only need one on any given card, so I cut some Thrummingbird variants and just added in a Viral Drake, as it adds poison to the mix plus repeatable proliferate rather than needing to deal damage. Similarly, Luminous Broodmoth generally is going to provide more flying counters than Wingspan Mentor and Jiang Yangu, Wildcrafter is basically just a better Rishkar that isn't a creature.

A couple cards simply came out due to not being particularly great. Shield Broker seems like a fine enough card, but it's really easy to break through shield counters and it means any creatures you gain control of can be easily stolen back. Just doesn't feel as good when the shield counter aspect of the Brokers is only a minor theme in a list like this overall. Similarly, Bribe Taker just feels like a big dumb creature that could often be many other better things. If you're able to get it down after you've had a Crystalline Giant sit around for a few turns, then maybe it can get a little silly, but as is, it's not particularly exciting.

Contractual Safeguard also seems a little meh when there's so many other ways to dish out counters more effectively. Family's Favor just slowly gives out shield counters and sometimes draws you a card, which Edric just does better by adding him in. Luminarch Aspirant, Power Conduit, Exotic Pets, and Roalesk, Apex Hybrid - all fine cards in their own right, but there's just so many better cards that can be used in something like this. And that's to say nothing of Ajani Unyielding. The guy barely even does anything with counters. You mean to tell me you couldn't put in something like Ajani, Mentor to Heroes or even Ajani, the Greathearted? It's just such an uninspired choice that we thankfully have several choices we go with instead. I myself went with the counter-heavy options of Vivien, Monsters' Advocate and Elspeth Resplendent for easy choices that probably won't break your bank.

And speaking of not breaking the bank, I'd like to end this upgrade by providing you with a handful of other fairly affordable options that you can use to get some unique counters and abilities in the deck. These upgrades and choices are simply my preferences and even then, I had quite a few tough choices, cutting sweet cards just to make room in general. Here's some you can find largely on the cheap:

Azor's Elocutors (Filibuster Counters)

Bounty of the Luxa (Flood Counters)

Briber's Purse (Gem Counters)

Chromatic Armor (Sleight Counters)

Chronozoa (Time Counters)

Crescendo of War (Strife Counters)

Faithbound Judge // Sinner's Judgment (Judgment Counters)

Foreboding Statue // Forsaken Thresher (Omen Counters)

Grimoire of the Dead (Study Counters)

Icatian Moneychanger (Credit Counters)

Intrepid Adversary (Valor Counters)

Jar of Eyeballs (Eyeball Counters)

Ludevic's Test Subject // Ludevic's Abomination (Hatchling Counters)

Magnetic Web (Magnet Counters)

Ominous Seas (Foreshadow Counters)

Palliation Accord (Palliation Counters)

Scars of the Veteran (+0/+1 Counters)

Serrated Arrows (Arrowhead Counters)

Strixhaven Stadium (Point Counters)

Tome of Legends (Page Counters)

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard (Verse Counters)

There's still more beyond these, as well, and I've no doubt we'll see more yet to come. I mean, heck, we just got a brand new one in this set with shield counters! There're tons of ways to build this deck which made it such a challenge to put together here. There's no truly wrong way to build a list, so try this precon at your next Commander night and see what works for you. There's no shortage of great options for you to choose from, and I'm confident you'll find what you like best!

Paige Smith

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