“phew! 3 days of boring videos over” I hear you say. Sadly for you I’m following those videos up with some extra boring posts. Welcome to the first of those cures for insomnia.
I do like playing this deck, the majority of it’s current state is based on the $20 Budget Upgrade for the Arcane Wizardry 2017 Commander deck on the MTGGoldfish web site. You may have noticed from one or two other decks I’ve used them as the starting point for taking a precon and making it my own more than once. The nice thing about this site and the articles is that these are budget upgrades that the majority of people can afford.

I would not let a new player use this deck as their first deck to pilot. There needs to be a lot of attention paid to what is going on. And there is also a fair bit of decision making to make also on your turn. And it’s these two things that make this deck fun for me to play with.

The Commander I went for with the 2017 precon was Kess, Dissident Mage. I liked the plan of attack for Kess over the one for Inalla. I went spell-slinger over wizards. Hey we are wizards we should be slinging spells. It’s thematic.

Ok something I keep forgetting in this type of post, here is the mana curve for the deck as done by the Decked app.

As an exercise I got the app to also price the deck up based on the CardKingdom prices at the time of writing, and it weighed in at a few cents shy $132. Sensei’s Divining Top and The Immortal Sun account for roughly $38 of this price. Which happen to be two of the cards I swapped in. That’s not bad if you are buying the singles. But I’m sure the original precon can be picked up for around the original price, so it should be possible to put this together for half that if you stick to the original posts budget upgrade list.

Here is the all important deck list:

Creatures:15

1 Young Pyromancer
1 Izzet Chemister
1 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Shadowmage Infiltrator
1 Archaeomancer
1 Kess, Dissident Mage (Commander)
1 Talrand, Sky Summoner
1 Bloodline Necromancer
1 Body Double
1 Izzet Chronarch
1 Magus of the Future
1 Mercurial Chemister
1 Prognostic Sphinx
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Arcanis the Omnipotent

Spells:47

1 By Force
1 Dark Ritual
1 Faithless Looting
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Spell Pierce
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Comet Storm
1 Dimir Signet
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Go for the Throat
1 Helm of Awakening
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Into the Roil
1 Izzet Signet
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Reality Shift
1 Reverberate
1 Terminate
1 Burning Vengeance
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Crosis’s Charm
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Frantic Search
1 Sage’s Dousing
1 To the Slaughter
1 Unstable Obelisk
1 Worn Powerstone
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Insidious Will
1 Jace’s Sanctum
1 Memory Plunder
1 Primal Amulet
1 Syphon Mind
1 Dark Petition
1 Increasing Ambition
1 Mana Geyser
1 Metallurgic Summonings
1 Silumgar’s Command
1 Mind’s Desire
1 Opportunity
1 Spelltwine
1 The Immortal Sun
1 Kindred Dominance
1 Necromantic Selection
1 Decree of Pain

Lands:38

1 Arcane Lighthouse
1 Command Tower
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Dismal Backwater
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Grixis Panorama
10 Island
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Jwar Isle Refuge
4 Mountain
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Rakdos Carnarium
1 Scavenger Grounds
6 Swamp
1 Swiftwater Cliffs
1 Temple of the False God
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Vivid Crag
1 Vivid Creek
1 Vivid Marsh

Now this post isn’t the end of me talking about this deck. The next post will be looking at whether I have new cards that should be in this deck, and if so what do they replace?