Welcome to the Nitpicking Nerds Precon Upgrade Guide for the Aura of Courage deck, where we deliver the full list of cuts and adds needed to power up this deck! 

When upgrading a precon, it’s important to build towards the commander’s strengths and stick to a main theme so the deck doesn’t become unfocused. Cutting cards of wildly differing strategies will help keep the deck focused and increase its synergy. It’s also useful to address the deck’s win conditions, and for this deck specifically, to speed up the clock and eliminate players as quickly as possible in combat.

Aura of Courage’s main strategy is to combine Equipment and Auras to suit up your creatures and swing in for big damage, and it’s going to win by assembling a one-shot kill on each of your opponents while protecting the attacking creature!

With that key strategy in mind, it’s time to start cutting cards that won’t be pulling their weight.

• Catti-brie of Mithral Hall and Storvald, Frost Giant Jarl are better off commanding their own decks and won’t work well in this deck.
• Clay Golem’s ability is far too expensive to keep in the deck, and does nothing for our Voltron plan.
• Fey Steed could work well, but its stats and abilities don’t quite make the cut for the power level this deck ended up at.
• Ride the Avalanche is one of the worst cards in the precon and probably won’t find a home in many decks going forward.
• Song of Inspiration is a disappointing die-roll card that doesn’t deliver, and Angel of Finality is a bit expensive for graveyard hate.
• Realm-Cloaked Giant is a big head-scratcher, since this isn’t a giant deck and we don’t need a 7 mana 7/7.

Now we can cut the subpar Equipment. Most of these are okay, but we can do better. We need to hit as hard as possible, or protect our creatures.

• Argentum Armor, Sword of Hours, Belt of Giant Strength, and Behemoth Sledge come in the precon and are meant to power up the deck’s creatures, but we can do so much better. These are better left on the sidelines.
• No Voltron deck has any time for Viridian Longbow!
• Moonsilver Spear spits out 4/4’s, but is too slow of an engine, especially when you can’t score a free Equip.
• Winged Boots will provide some level of protection, but we can do so much better.
• Masterwork of Ingenuity works very well if you build this deck around Equipment alone, but we are leaning into both Auras and Equipment, so there just isn’t space for a card so heavily reliant on Equipment.

It’s time to trim some Auras, too.

• Curse of Verbosity and Psychic Impetus are not cards you have time for when playing Voltron.
• Verdant Embrace is nice, but this deck is going tall, not wide.
• Abundant Growth, Angelic Gift, and Gryff’s Boon are a little too low impact to justify keeping.
• Lastly for Auras comes Eel Umbra and Shielding Plax, which can’t protect our key creatures nearly as well as the cards that are being added.

This section represents various cuts in other categories that help focus the deck more around its Voltron strategy,

• Valorous Stance and Bant Charm are subpar removal spells that are instant cuts.
• Ebony Fly, Arcane Signet, and Paradise Druid work well in the precon, but this is a green deck that doesn’t need mana rocks and has access to better dorks.
• As soon as you leave the precon meta, we recommend cutting Acidic Slime from any deck.
• Diviner’s Portent, Riverwise Augur, Serum Visions, and Netherese Puzzle-Ward aren’t unplayable, but again, Galea doesn’t want this much fluff.
• Prognostic Sphinx and Cold-Eyed Selkie can’t cut it as Equipment and Aura wearers.
• Valiant Endeavor is a cool board wipe, but one we’re looking to avoid for this particular deck.

Lastly, the land cuts: Azorius Chancery, Simic Growth Chamber, Halimar Depths, Lumbering Falls, Thriving Grove, Thriving Heath, Thriving Isle, Mishra’s Factory, two Forests, and an Island.

Now that we’ve gutted the deck, it’s time to put in better, harder-hitting cards that will score you more wins.

Let’s first upgrade the equipment suite.

• Shadowspear and Sword of Feast and Famine offer nice evasion and increase the damage output of the creature they’re equipped to, which is a nice combination.
• Stoneforge Mystic and Stonehewer Giant can tutor out whichever equipment we need most and are generally awesome.
• Fireshrieker, Nettlecyst, and Blackblade Reforged are your damage dealers. These are the main equipment that add enough power to end games.
• Hammer of Nazahn grants indestructibility and cheats Equip costs, and Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith himself is just an additional copy of his hammer, with a small bonus.

Now, it’s time to enhance the Aura side of the deck.

• Wolfwillow Haven is solid ramp that fits the theme of the deck, and even works well with Arbor Elf, which we also added.
• Rune of Sustenance works well on your creatures and on equipment, so it’s a really cool addition.
• Unquestioned Authority and Aqueous Form provide the ultimate evasion, letting your suited up creatures smash in unopposed. All That Glitters is a perfect fit for a deck riding the line between both strategies, and will add significant power.
• Kestia the Cultivator and Sovereigns of Lost Alara pack a lot of punch and help further enhance our creatures. Siona, Captain of the Pyleas helps find Auras and even goes infinite with another card we added, Shielded by Faith. Use them together to create infinite 1/1 Soldier creature tokens!
• Lastly are a handful of enchantments that help tie everything together: Courser of Kruphix (for topdeck manipulation), Sanctum Weaver, Eidolon of Blossoms, Setessan Champion, and Sythis, Harvest’s Hand.

There are just a few more boxes to check before we have a fully-functional upgraded precon.

• Brainstone and Garruk, Primal Hunter add some card selection and card draw to the deck.
• Armored Skyhunter, Heavenly Blademaster, and Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist let us fiddle around with our Auras and Equipment and really tie this deck together, allowing us to focus on both card types.
• Sun Titan and Open the Armory are nice ways to find or recur important pieces.
• In terms of powerful removal, here’s what we decided to add: Swords to Plowshares, Kabira Takedown, Qasali Pridemage, Dismantling Wave, Arcane Denial, and Stubborn Denial. Notably, this precon lacked any true counterspells, so we’ve remedied that problem.
• Finally, we get to add more creatures that wear Auras and Equipment well: Invisible Stalker, Slippery Scoundrel, Slippery Bogbonder, and Sigarda, Host of Herons. These are our main game-enders that stick around to dish out massive damage while being immune to spot-removal.

• To improve the manabase, we added Irrigated Farmland, Scattered Groves, Hallowed Fountain, Breeding Pool, Temple Garden, and Krosan Verge. The deck also began to skew more heavily towards white, so one Plains was added.

That concludes the Aura of Courage Upgrade Guide! Whether you’re building Galea towards Equipment, Auras, or both, you now have everything you need to build an unstoppable creature capable of knocking everyone else out of the game!