Daxos the ReturnedDaxos the Returned | Art by Adam Paquette

Returning from the Underworld

Greetings and welcome to Precon Remastered! Here is where we unearth old preconstructed decks from their graves and give them new life (perhaps with a special, golden mask, too!). This week, we're kicking off the Commander 2015 festivities with a commander who was relatively obscure until recently, when it spiked because of a precon helmed by Killian, Decisive MentorKillian, Decisive Mentor (cool deck, by the way). Which one do I mean? This one.

Poor, poor Daxos. Impaled by his girlfriend because Xenagos, God of RevelsXenagos, God of Revels got really cheeky and needed to become a god so bad. In any case, his card holds a unique niche in the enchantress pantheon. He, along with a couple of other Orzhov commanders (including the aforementioned Killian), are the only ways to play an enchantment deck within these colors. Daxos gives us an experience counter for each enchantment that gets cast. On top of that, we could make some big enchantment beaters for three mana.

Gaining Our Bearings

As always, here are our rules for remastering precons:

1. The value of the deck cannot exceed $120. This will apply to the reprints only, which gets to my first personal quirk.
2. Every card unique to the original precon stays in the deck. All those new cards that get released with precons remain in the list.
3. The land package should closely reflect what we get in precons these days (and, in my humble opinion, they're actually pretty good).
4. At least until 2020, we're not tied to a particular set, so we're free to choose whatever we want. You can be assured I have ideas for 2020 and beyond, though.
5. Universes Beyond cards are not added. No exceptions, unless they have an in-universe variant. Granted, this will change when we get there.

With that out of the way, let's see what the original list looked like.

The Original Deck List

Regrets in Life

Firstly, we can see that precons have been improving, but only a little. It'd be years before we see something substantial. Secondly, there is evidence of an identity crisis with this deck, splitting it between Enchantress and Lifegain. A lot of the life gain is primarily for the secondary commander, Karlov of the Ghost CouncilKarlov of the Ghost Council. Make no mistake, he is a powerful card, but he does not belong here. Sadly, he has to remain because of the rules.

The good news, though, is that there are a few enchantments that actually help Karlov. However, he's not the commander for this deck, so any life gain we make is more accidental than intentional. In fact, our priority when remastering this deck is to amass a large number of experience counters.

There's also a good amount of fluff among the reprints that can be easily cut, including Dawnglare InvokerDawnglare Invoker and Underworld CoinsmithUnderworld Coinsmith. We can do better than both of these, especially with over a decade's worth of cards being added to our card pool.

The Newly Returned

Before we get to the remastered list, let's discuss the new cards. One of my biggest gripes with this precon is that the creature count is too high for where I need it to be. This is unfortunately off the back of the new cards, like the myriad pair (e.g., Herald of the HostHerald of the Host) and Corpse AugurCorpse Augur, which does not belong here. Neither did the backup commander I mentioned above, to be fair.

However, for all the flak I give the new cards in this precon, Commander 2015 does introduce one of my favorite cycles in the game: Confluences! Unfortunately, for this week, we're stuck with the worst of the cycle, relatively speaking. Righteous ConfluenceRighteous Confluence here means that our backup commander is ready to remove something while we gain 15 life. That said, we're also likely going to exile a troublesome enchantment and/or make a few tokens.

Finally, Daxos's TormentDaxos's Torment reminds me of Cacophony UnleashedCacophony Unleashed in that each enchantment that comes in animates them for some brutal beatings. Except Cacophony also board wipes on entry, but it forgoes haste while getting other keywords (spoilers: it's in the remastered version).

The Remastered Deck List

A New, Enchanting Life

List cost (at time of writing): $108.84

Remastered Cost (again, at time of writing): $111.24

That's not much of a bump in price, and we're well below the $120 threshold. And the fixes are sure to give our commander more firepower. I've added a few cards that you can activate to return them to our hand. That way, we can cast them again and again to build up our experience counters! The best of these is Flickering WardFlickering Ward, which has the added benefit of protecting our key creatures.

On top of that, we also have more ways to build up an army of tokens. Both Archon of Sun's GraceArchon of Sun's Grace and Soaring LightbringerSoaring Lightbringer make tokens when enchantments enter and when we attack, respectively. Lightbringer, though, has the added benefit of giving the spirits made from Daxos the ReturnedDaxos the Returned flying, so we get some evasion. Ghostly DancersGhostly Dancers makes flying tokens when enchantments enter, and also lets us reclaim one from our graveyard on entry.

A Second Life

Comparing this precon with the one helmed by Killian, Decisive MentorKillian, Decisive Mentor, the latter's better in many ways, but that doesn't mean this precon isn't a good place to look for upgrades. I point to Daxos the ReturnedDaxos the Returned's price spike as an example of this take. Anyway, while we have a spicier precon to cover soon, next week we return to the other series, Commander Makeover, so I'll see you all then.