It’s Commander Christmas tomorrow. Yep the Commander 2019 pre-con decks hit your FLGS. We finally get our hands on the decks.

Commander content creators like The Command Zone and MtG Goldfish have already put up posts/videos on budget upgrades that can be done to these decks.

I’ve decided to share my planned upgrades but using cards from the current Standard legal sets. There have been some great cards that I think warrant the label of being a Commander staple. Naturally if you have the likes of Cyclonic Rift, Rhystic Studies, and Sensei’s Divining Top put them in. I will be. But for this post they fall outside the selection criteria for talking about.

Out of the four decks the one so far that I’m most excited to play in it’s straight out of the box form, and also upgrade is Faceless Menace and the morph mechanic.

I will say this does not mean I’m not excited to play the other decks. It’s just Faceless Menace appeals to me the most.

For any post like this bare in mind the cards are subjective, selected based on my local meta (your local meta will most definitively be different), what I have in my collection and can afford (which is also very very subjective).

So let’s look at the cards I plan to upgrade the deck with from the current Standard legal sets.

When this years decks were being spoilt with their graveyard shenanigans such as flashback and that madness mechanic I kept thinking where is the graveyard hate? I like graveyard hate. These three cards do a pretty awesome job of shutting down that shenanigans. Plus the nice thing about Grafdigger’s Cage is that it stops also those decks/cards that allow/treat the library as an extension of the hand, with casting the top card of your library.

Flash is a great mechanic. Being able to flash out those 2/2 morph creatures each player’s turn for free with the Commanders ability is amazing value. The Leyline and Vivien give me that ability. Lotus Field is a nice land.

I like tutors. Scheming Symmetry is a great Commander card especially if you can cast it as if it has flash.

I love Immortal Sun, plus it doesn’t switch off the 2 Planeswalkers I’ve included here. They were included for their ongoing abilities. If I get to use the activated loyalty abilities that’s a bonus. It’s extra card draw, spells get cheaper, and a buff to creatures. Amazing value. Plus with Ugin it means casting a morph card is free.

Well you already know why this Ugin is here. It’s that discount. The other stuff is just gravy. I like Bag of Holding. That maybe an unpopular opinion. But I like that I can dump cards into it to use later in the game.

If you are going to be able to play cards as if they have flash, then you need the mana. I loved playing Wilderness Reclamation in Standard in my Simic deck. And I love it in Commander.

So they are the Standard cards I am going to upgrade the deck with. The bigger question is what goes? I know the alternative commanders are first for the chopping block. But after that I’ll decide once I have the cards in front of me.

What do you think? Did I miss any?