Upgrading the Mishra's Burnished Banner Precon

Posted on December 21, 2022

A few weeks back, I covered the Urza's Iron Alliance deck and talked about upgrading it with some sweet new cards. But there's a catch this time around! Because we're going back in time for one of Magic's oldest stories with The Brothers' War, so too are we going back in time with these decks! As a result, both of the preconstructed decks are entirely retro frame, and so I'm here to honor that by making upgrades exclusively with retro frame cards!

This week, we're talking about Mishra's Burnished Banner with Mishra, Eminent One as the commander! I've gotta say, for as hyped as I was to see Urza show back up again when I saw so much of him growing up, I was actually a bit more excited to see Mishra! For as much as we've seen of Urza over the years, we've rarely ever gotten an opportunity to see his brother, cursed by Gix and the Phyrexian forces. In fact, the only real times we ever saw him were a few glimpses in Urza's Saga (Endoskeleton, Retaliation), Planeshift (Urza's Guilt), Time Spiral (Mishra, Artificer Prodigy), and the one lone Vanguard card. Hardly a strong representation.

Going back to The Brothers' War gives us a look at one of the main focuses of the war that we never really got to see back in Antiquities: Mishra himself. Like Urza, he's here in this set with four brand new versions and shows up on several different artworks. We get to see more of the story and his role in the classic feud with Urza and the many aspects where things went wrong, such as the death of Tocasia and his manipulation at the hands of Gix. In this deck we see a lot of his dealings with artifacts, his associate Ashnod, and touches of the involvement of the Phyrexians.

Let's check out the base precon and then dive on into its contents!

Mishra's Burnished Banner Precon | Commander | Wizards of the Coast

Commander (1)
1 Mishra, Eminent One

This is the kind of deck I absolutely love. I could take this right out of the box and have a delightful time. Urza's deck is the kind of deck that really appeals to the Timmys and Tammys of the world - focusing primarily on building up a big army of creatures. But that was really all it was at the end of the day, just a deck trying to swarm the board with a bunch of creatures. Mishra does a bit of that as well, but there's more subtlety to it all. If Urza is a Timmy/Tammy deck, then Mishra's deck is one meant for Johnnys and Jennys.

The beauty of this deck is that if you look at it without the commander, it might leave you scratching your head wondering what's going on here. It's a lot of cards providing subtle value with a handful of big, splashy finishes like Geth, Lord of the Vault and Blast-Furnace Hellkite. When you start pairing a lot of those subtle value cards with Mishra, Eminent One, however, you get a deck full of synergistic interactions. That's where the fun really begins.

One of the first things I noticed was how it almost felt like there was a bit too many mana rocks. Does this deck really need a Thran Dynamo or Dreamstone Hedron? Maybe not, but they can also help fuel out some of the bigger plays. Use a Dreamstone Hedron or Spine of Ish Sah alongside Mishra and you'll find yourself swimming in value. Something like Mnemonic Sphere seems rather innocuous until you copy it as a 4/4, attack, and then sacrifice it to draw cards in your second main phase. Copy a Cursed Mirror and get a different creature each time, then sacrifice it to Fain, the Broker for even more value. And if you have Ashnod, the Uncaring down then it amps up even more heavily.

The more you look through the list and the more you play it, the more you see these subtle interactions. Continually get cards with Ichor Wellspring, Prophetic Prism, and Mycosynth Wellspring or kill stuff and get some extra tokens courtesy of Servo Schematic and Oni-Cult Anvil. Trading Post feels like a weird card, until you realize just how many tokens you can sacrifice to it over and over again. You can either get back artifacts that you lost or draw more cards. Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer gets extra crazy as well since you can basically turn each of your myrs into whichever artifact you turned on with Mishra - and that rules.

There's so much going on it's hard not to fall in love with it. I know I did, and I'm dying for an opportunity to actually get to sit down and play with the deck. For now, though, we need to look at some upgrades. You might be surprised by what you see, so let's take a look at the list!

Mishra's Burnished Banner Revamped | Commander | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Mishra, Eminent One

Enchantments (2)
1 Attrition
1 Phyrexian Arena

I'm going to admit: I had a much tougher time upgrading this deck compared to the Urza precon last week. Urza, Chief Artificer is a commander who doesn't have a huge amount of synergy to him. He's basically saying "play as many cool artifact creatures as possible and go to town." With a deck like that, it's largely just about upping the overall card quality and filling some holes that may have been present. It felt tough to cut down, but only in the sense that it was challenging to figure out the best way to increase the power level with the card choices available.

When it comes to Mishra, the problem is just how tightly constructed the list is. Almost everything has a place and the synergy is off the charts. Because of that, it makes cutting cards really difficult. Normally when I make these upgrades, I end up adding in a pretty healthy chunk of non-land cards. In this one, I only ended up adding twelve! That's not because the quality wasn't there, either - far from it in fact. I actually had around forty-ish cards lined up and ready to go, but only twelve made the final cut.

The cards I left out were pretty good too. I thought about adding in stuff like Lim-Dul's Vault, Dregs of Sorrow, and Deep Analysis for card draw, but found that there were enough way to generate advantage that they felt unnecessary. I looked at Phyrexian Altar, Reprocess, and Claws of Gix for sacrifice outlets, but the quality was good enough apart from a super small handful of things I added. I thought about Grave Pact, even, but felt it was a little too mana intensive for this mana base. Some other highlights left out include Phyrexian Reclamation, Terminate, Wurmcoil Engine, Solemn Simulacrum, Counterspell, Gilded Lotus, and more. There was a ton to work with - it just felt not so great in this particular list or that it lacked the kind of synergy I was looking for.

The cards I ended up adding in were largely ones that I felt had that kind of synergy. Attrition and Stronghold Assassin are both great selections because they provide excellent post-combat ways to sacrifice your now useless tokens and get some value out of them. You can also sacrifice to Ashnod's Altar for mana, Diabolic Intent for tutoring, or Goblin Welder to get back lost artifacts. You can use Scrap Trawler too, since your tokens made by Mishra still have mana values to work off of. There's also Marionette Master to make short work of your opponents in no time flat. The others - Thought Monitor, Phyrexian Arena, Foundry Inspector, Chromatic Lantern, and Sai, Master Thopterist - all just felt like good solid ways to provide value.

It's almost easier to talk about the cards I ended up cutting out from the deck more than it is the cards I brought in. Some of them were pretty obvious. As I hinted at above, I didn't see the point of Dreamstone Hedron and Thran Dynamo much myself, nor was I big on cards like Commander's Sphere or Prophetic Prism. A few were swapped out for cards I thought to be a bit more fitting - Ashnod's Altar and Chromatic Lantern - but largely I just thought there was a little too much of a glut of mana rocks here. I get the idea, but to me if you're casting stuff like Dreamstone Hedron, then playing most of your other top end really shouldn't be that much of an issue - especially when it's such a small chunk of a deck like this one.

The other big thing I cut was some of the larger creatures. Mishra cares about dealing with non-creature artifacts, so playing cards like Metalwork Colossus and Scavenged Brawler are fun, but you aren't likely going to get the kind of value you'd like out of them. The Colossus has no evasion, so even though it can hit hard, it'll just get chump blocked by tokens constantly. Similarly Scavenged Brawler is a sweet card, but often feels like a french vanilla card that might give you a bit of extra value once from the graveyard. I similarly can't help but look at cards like Hellkite Igniter and Glint Raker and see anything but big, clunky creatures and feel you could do better. Herald of Anguish feels similar. Yeah, you can get it down cheap and remove some creatures, but the forced discard can help opponents and then it's just another big flier.

Removing many of these cards for the new additions mostly felt like just improving the quality a bit. Yes you lose some of the top end, but a lot of it isn't as great as it may seem in a Commander setting. The new list still doesn't run too many creatures on its own, but you'll be accruing so much value with Mishra and using some of the other newer tools to control the game so much it shouldn't matter. Mishra rules and battles with an iron fist (literally) and at the end of the day, like with Urza, you get one of the best Commander precons in a very long time.

That about wraps it up for this upgrade article! I hinted at it once before, but this is going to bring my regular precon upgrades to a close. A big part of this is because, frankly, the quality has gone up so much over the last year or so that it's almost hard to actually make improvements at times. When I'm feeling like I'm pulling teeth trying to make cuts, you know that things are pretty damn good. Hats off to Wizards for these recent outings, because they're simply great. I had to stick it out for one more run, though, because I absolutely wanted to touch on these all-retro decks in a fun and unique way.

At this point, though, I think it's going to be better to focus on making fresh, all-new decks for people to check out and play. I'll come back to upgrades from time to time when something interests me, but it simply won't be every deck, every set like I've been doing for the past few years now. There's a whole slew of awesome legendary creatures to talk about in this last year alone, and a new year full of sweet new cards is right around the corner. Until next time, may your precon and upgrades provide you with the best of times at your next Commander night!

Paige Smith

Twitter: @TheMaverickGal

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TAGS articles, casual, artifacts, edh, commander, preconstructed, decklist, grixis, precon, synergy, paige smith, commander hq, bro, the brothers' war, mishra eminent one, 12212022