Today I'd like to take you on a bit of a ride. As regular readers may know, I have run an EDH league since 2016 at my local game store, NexGen Comics in Pelham, New Hampshire. It's a great store and we've had some great times, but when Covid hit we ended up taking a long break.

Post-pandemic, we restarted the league in July 2021 and played our usual 12-month season ending in June 2022. Our seasons had been January to December and after this offset season, the league voted to take six months off and restart at the beginning of 2023.

For the break between league seasons we tried a few things, but nothing really worked or caught the attention of our player base until the store decided to try out a Precon league. The idea was simple - with the release of the Brothers War we would each start play with an unmodified 2022 precon deck. After the second round of league games each Saturday, players would be able to buy boosters and both update our decks and trade with other players in the league.

I had a couple of BRO precons from CoolStuffInc.com and ended up using Mishra's Burnished Banner, lending out my Urza's Iron Alliance to a friend in the league who wasn't sure he wanted to bother picking up a deck just to participate.

Players were allowed to play any 2022 precon or starter EDH deck. There would be a $5 entry fee that would be waived if the precon was purchased from NexGen Comics. We were limited to one booster to add to our pool for the first few weeks, but that soon got bumped up to two boosters. We could trade only from cards in our decks or from the pool of cards we had opened in those booster packs, which had to be bought from the store. We could switch decks, but the first day (2 rounds) of league play on a new deck would have to be done without changes to the stock decklist.

All in all, it's been a fun experience. I wasn't sure I'd enjoy it, as I have always liked to be able to just play whatever I like and switch freely from deck to deck. Being locked into a deck for weeks on end didn't sound great, but I was able to make it work.

Act 1: Mishra

The league didn't start well for me. One might assume that all precon decks are roughly equal in power level, but in my experience that is far from the case. One of the guys in our league had the foresight (or good luck) to have picked the Naya Cabaretti Cacophony precon deck from Streets of New Capenna.

I believe he had Phabine, Boss's Confidant as his commander and he just wrecked us, winning games before other players were able to establish much of a boardstate. The Warhammer 40k decks were also very strong, consistently building up imposing boardstates and proving to be difficult to deal with. My own Mishra deck never really felt like it could keep up with those more aggressive decks.

It was frustrating to play a deck that was ostensibly powerful, but without the upgrades one might want to make to actually push the power level up. I quickly realized that winning the league probably wasn't in the cards for me, but I wasn't entering into the experience with any real expectation of winning. I wasn't that excited about the deck and after getting wrecked a few times my interest didn't go up.

The pool of cards from my boosters wasn't terrible. We had a pretty good variety of sets to pick from and the store owner even went out of his way to get a box of Mystery Boosters and Modern Horizons II boosters for the league. I opened an Exsanguinate and an Urza's Saga, both of which went right into my deck. I also got a laugh out of the whole store by opening an Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, which is only notable because I am pretty well-known for hating that particular card. I traded the Elesh Norn to the guy who was borrowing my Urza precon, as I was not in White but it didn't feel right to not let her get into the mix of League games.

I had a fit of generosity and traded a Chromatic Lantern to another player who was on the Dominaria United five color "Painbow" precon deck. I did find myself hesitant to trade cards to players who were already winning games, but this guy hadn't had much luck yet with his deck and I figured he could use a hand with his color fixing.

I might have gotten close to winning a game in those early weeks, but it was pretty rough sledding. I will be the first to admit that the complexity of the ability on Mishra, Eminent One was part of the reason I wasn't excited about the deck.

I just knew I would screw it up somehow, and boy was I right.

I don't know what was going through my head, but I ended up having a game where I repeatedly used Mishra to create token copies of a Hexavus. It felt brilliant at the time - they were 4/4 Construct artifact creature tokens but then they also got six +1/+1 counters, making them 10/10s. Of course, it was too good to be true.

Mishra only allows you to make creature tokens of NON-creature artifacts you control.

I immediately conceded the game, profusely apologized, and decided I was done with Mishra, Eminent One.

I might be showing my age here, but I don't think Wizards of the Coast is making the game better by making these cards more and more complicated. I can't be the only player who has screwed up how these new cards work and I'm a relatively experienced Commander player. Putting these really complex new cards into precon decks seems a little insane to me. Every additional caveat or qualifier on a card's ability is something else for a player to forget or miss, and in my case both I and the entire table missed that I was playing Mishra wrong.

It's not that I can't learn from my missteps, but I wasn't that excited about playing Mishra to begin with. I used my slip-up as a convenient excuse to switch gears and maybe have a little more fun in my next few league games. We were allowed to switch commanders so I decided to remove Mishra from the deck entirely.

Act Two: Ashnod

I had written a column about Ashnod the Uncaring, so I was relatively sure I wouldn't screw up her ability. Her text box has a lot going on, but she's not quite as bad as Mishra.

Ashnod the Uncaring also wants to have combo pieces added in, but her bread and butter is in squeezing extra value out of cards like Hedron Archive, Dreamstone Hedron and Idol of Oblivion. I was able to have a little fun with those extra sacrifice payoffs, but the deck still felt slow compared to other players' decks.

I was able to have some good games with Ashnod at the helm. At one point I managed to play Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, use Idol of Oblivion to make a 10/10 Eldrazi titan, get a copy using Ashnod, and then make some little token 2/1 Myr tokens into 10/10s.

Ashnod doesn't seem that dangerous but if you are able to make a bunch of 10/10 Eldrazi or play out a Hellkite Igniter with a huge number of artifacts on your battlefield, you can really do some damage. Blast-Furnace Hellkite also proved to be a problem for my opponents. There was another league player on Atarka, World Render, who was very eager to trade with me so he could get his hands on one of those two Dragons. He ended up opening an Ancient Copper Dragon out of a booster and happily gave me the "two finger salute" when I tried to cajole him into trading one of my Dragons for it.

Gruul Dragons actually turns out to be a serviceable and even dangerous precon deck. It takes a while to get going, but if you let it get out of hand you're going to have a lot of damage coming at you, even without Blast-Furnace Hellkite in the mix.

It's worth noting that another player in our precon league had been winning games with the mono-black Warhammer 40k deck. I think he's been using Szarekh, the Silent King as his commander and I know for a fact that he won one of our games a turn before I was going to Exsanguinate the table. He cast a big Torment of Hailfire that felt like it came out of nowhere.

The ability to open booster packs and expand the pool of cards we're using has given us some real surprises. We have enough players that we don't know what everyone else is opening and adding to their decks. I was sure I had that game with my Exsanguinate and found it hilarious that my tablemate had an equally notorious big black finisher to snatch the victory from me.

I enjoyed playing Ashnod much more than Mishra, but I was still feeling like something was missing. I wasn't excited about the deck. There were too many hoops to jump through to try to really be a force at the table. I often doubted whether I would draw into anything that Ashnod could really work with.

Even though the deck was doing better, it was time to switch things up. The store decided to extend the Precon league through the end of January, so I had a few more weeks on my hands. I was briefly tempted by Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, but the deck wasn't pushing out enough tokens to warrant turning it into a Brudiclad deck. I still decided to drop down to 2 colors and play an Izzet deck for the rest of the month.

Act Three: Jhoira

I've built Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain before. The traditional approach is to play as many low mana artifacts as possible, allowing you to draw a ton of cards so you can always have interaction, and you get to your wincon as quickly as possible. Because you run so many artifacts with 0 for their casting cost, the nickname for a cEDH Jhoira list is Jhoira "Cheerios."

I didn't have the luxury of just adding whatever cards I wanted, so I looked at all of the old brown-framed artifacts in my deck and decided I'd be building Jhoira "Bran Flakes." Bran Flakes are brown. The old-style artifacts in my Mishra precon are mostly brown. Bran Flakes are good for you. One might argue that playing a fairer Jhoira build without all that Moxen / Mana Crypt nonsense would be good for me.

It was an easy decision and one I was genuinely excited about.

How many cards can I draw before I get rolled by an aggro precon?

It's fun to find out!

The Naya precon was still at or near the top of the league rankings, alongside the mono-Black Warhammer 40k deck and a few others. I was well out of the running, and that was OK by me. I've found over the years that some of my best games happen when I've stopped focusing quite so much on winning and losing and just relax and enjoy the game.

As I write this, I've played two games with my Jhoira Bran Flakes list and it's played quite well. Our precon meta has lots of removal and boardwipes, but Jhoira didn't draw that much attention. I never made a strong early game push, but was able to consistently keep a decent sized hand throughout each game.

I actually managed to win my first game on the back of a number of pretty sweet interactions. The Mishra precon comes with some neat cards and I was able to play a Machine God's Effigy as a copy of Inquisitor Greyfax, giving my creatures vigilance and a +1/+0 anthem effect. Effigy enters as a copy of a creature, but it is not a creature (yet another slightly confusing textbox for new players to have to navigate) and allowed me to have blockers at a key point in the late game after I had just swung at a tablemate.

The best moment in the game for me was when a tablemate on Kardur, Doomscourge had his commander on the field and I had Cursed Mirror in hand and a way on the battlefield to bounce it back to my hand. When Kardur enters the battlefield, until your next turn your opponents' creatures attack each combat if able and attack a player other than you if able. That ability affects any creatures your opponents play even after Kardur has hit the table, and it is a delayed trigger so if Kardur is removed, that effect will still happen.

Cursed Mirror enters as a copy of any creature on the battlefield. My tablemate's Kardur had Lightning Greaves, but Cursed Mirror doesn't target so it was able to enter as a copy of Kardur. I had a Master Transmuter on the field and Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam in my hand, so I was optimistic that I'd be able to bounce my Mirror and do it again. Unfortunately, a tablemate spotted my setup in time and they all made sure that Master Transmuter was removed and that Kardur died and didn't hit the field for a few turns.

The win ended up coming down to some very close combat math. I was able to use Farid, Enterprising Salvager to take an alpha strike that was going to come up a few damage points short and use his ability to put +1/+1 counters on himself to get exact damage on a player. Being able to play out a Metalwork Colossus for nothing and have it get vigilance from my Machine-God Effigy copy of Inquisitor Greyfax didn't hurt (it felt fantastic) and I couldn't believe that my first Jhoira Bran Flakes game went so well. I happened to be at a table without any of the fast aggro decks that had been piling up the wins, but I wasn't about to complain.

The second game saw me matched up with that Naya player. We were able to keep him off his game plan, and I was in it for a while but came up short in the end. I've got at least a few more weeks of Jhoira, and I'm looking forward to playing the deck again.

In fact, I was excited enough about the deck that I started painting cards with an Iron Giant theme.

I went from being pretty uninspired about the prospect of playing Mishra for a few months to being so excited about this goofy Jhoira "Bran Flakes" deck that I'm even altering cards. I may not be a particularly great alterist, and I may not be poised to make a run at the top spot in the precon league, but I'm having fun and that means a lot.

Jhoira Bran Flakes

When sharing a list like this, it makes much more sense when you remember that it is the result of taking a Mishra precon, opening a bunch of boosters, trading for a few cards, and then going through the process of moving from Mishra to Ashnod to Jhoira. Even a mid-range Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain build would probably look very different from this list. I should note that there are a few cards in the mix that were gifts to league players from the store. My Windfall and Thought Vessel are foil promos. My Nin, the Pain Artist and Filigree Attendant were both trades. It's a real mishmash of a deck, but I think that makes me love it just a little more.

Jhoira League EDH | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain

• Creatures (22)
• 1 Arcbound Tracker
• 1 Audacious Reshapers
• 1 Blast-Furnace Hellkite
• 1 Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer
• 1 Drafna, Founder of Lat-Nam
• 1 Emry, Lurker of the Loch
• 1 Farid, Enterprising Salvager
• 1 Filigree Attendant
• 1 Glint Raker
• 1 Hellkite Igniter
• 1 Hexavus
• 1 Juggernaut
• 1 Master Transmuter
• 1 Metalwork Colossus
• 1 Muzzio, Visionary Architect
• 1 Myr Scrapling
• 1 Nin, the Pain Artist
• 1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
• 1 Power Plant Worker
• 1 Scavenged Brawler
• 1 Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer
• 1 Workshop Elders

• Spells (6)
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Galvanic Blast
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Expressive Iteration
• 1 Windfall

• Enchantment (1)
• 1 Seal of Removal

• Artifacts (29)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Bone Saw
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Cursed Mirror
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Elsewhere Flask
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Ichor Wellspring
• 1 Idol of Oblivion
• 1 Lithoform Engine
• 1 Machine God's Effigy
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mirrorworks
• 1 Mnemonic Sphere
• 1 Mycosynth Wellspring
• 1 Oblivion Stone
• 1 Prophetic Prism
• 1 Quietus Spike
• 1 Servo Schematic
• 1 Smelting Vat
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Spine of Ish Sah
• 1 Strionic Resonator
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Wayfarer's Bauble
• 1 Wondrous Crucible

• Planeswalker (1)
• 1 Daretti, Scrap Savant

• Lands (40)
• 13 Island
• 13 Mountain
• 1 Ash Barrens
• 1 Buried Ruin
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Great Furnace
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Seat of the Synod
• 1 Silverbluff Bridge
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Urza's Saga

Buy This Deck Export text format

If you wanted to push this list up, you could do worse than just googling cEDH Jhoira Cheerios. If you're on a budget, you can safely just build with lots of artifacts, artifact cost reducers and whatever Izzet or artifact based wincons you like playing. My old build was centered around using Battered Golem or Traxos, Scourge of Kroog with either Banishing Knack or Retraction Helix to set up an infinite loop where I'd bounce and recast a 0 mana artifact. The deck had a few payoffs to turn that into a win, and I enjoyed it more because the combo I was aiming for was a slightly more complicated one. Banishing Knack combo is fun and all, but I think of it as belonging in high powered EDH, not cEDH.

Final Thoughts

I'm still a little disappointed that our league's 2023 plans to start up in January got scuttled, but it has been a real breath of fresh air to see players excited to play in this new precon league. Watching folks gather round to watch someone open boosters, wondering if some new bomb is going to be introduced into the league meta, or if they'll see something that they might want to trade for, has been a lot of fun.

It's also been nice to not be the person running this particular league. Our old system involved a fair amount of work on the part of the league organizer. This league is only tracking wins, with a half point given for a draw - which generally only happens if a game goes to time without a winner.

We've been bouncing ideas around about what to do for the 2023 season. The precon league was successful enough that we might roll it back next December and January. We've talked about doing five "sprints" of 2 months each, with a theme for each two-month period and points totalled up both for each sprint and for the overall season. Whatever we do, I'm definitely looking forward to another year of playing commander nearly every Saturday.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!