Silverquill Influence Precon Upgrade Guide

Here's what's in the Silverquill Influence precon:

Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters

These Auras fulfill the same function of making a creature huge for a very small investment. Since Killian wants attacks, we might as well have big attackers.

Slumbering Keepguard

Don't underestimate the advantage we can get from scrying multiple times a turn. We'll quickly get to the cards you want most. Plus, it has its own built-in Ethereal Armor.

Spectral Grasp

What happens when we're down to two players left in the game and we've goaded all our opponent's creatures? Well, we're in trouble. Spectral Grasp helps with completely stopping the biggest creature on the board from hurting us or stopping our attackers.

Visions of Brutality

This is a really fun one to put on a giant beater that we've goaded. Why not drop two opponent life totals at once?

Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist

In the early game we'll be dropping Impetus Auras on smaller creatures to get our engine going. But what happens when a bigger creature enters that we'd rather have enchanted? Enter: Ardenn, who can move Auras around once on each of our combats.

Danitha Capashen, Paragon

We're throwing Danitha in because she not only makes our Auras cheaper, she's also an extremely powerful attacker once she's loaded up with Auras herself.

Eye of Nidhogg

Here's one that might have slipped past a lot of people's radars during Final Fantasy previews. There are multiple benefits on this Aura, from goading a threat, to making it harder to block, to coming right back to our hand if it ends up in the graveyard.

A home run for this deck.

Grim Guardian

Let's speed up games by dropping life totals a bit more quickly.

Minimus Containment

We're gonna ditch an instant removal spell or two so we can replace them with enchantment removal like this. Minimus Containment turns any nonland permanent into a Treasure, removing all of its other abilities and card types.

Not great to put on someone's commander, but excellent removal for pretty much anything else.

Victor, Valgavoth's Seneschal

Surveil 2 the first time we drop an enchantment each turn is some extremely significant card advantage. Making players discard for the second drop isn't all that great, but getting a creature from any graveyard just by bringing out a third enchantment in a turn is a huge win.

Boon of the Spirit Realm

With this Boon, our creatures will be massive. This is how we end games with combat.

Ondu Spiritdancer

One enchantment is good. Two is better.

Soaring Lightbringer

Not only are we giving all our enchantment creatures evasion, we're also making enchantment creatures. Up to three a turn, depending on how many players we attack.

Secret Arcade // Dusty Parlor

The important part here is Secret Arcade, which replaces Enchanted Evening for us, since that's outside our color identity. If every single nonland permanent enters play as an enchantment, we'll be getting a whole lot more triggers from Killian and all of our constellation cards.

Hall of Heliod's Generosity

An Enchantress staple that's just a bit on the pricey side. We may go a whole game without using it, but some games it'll be crucial.

Reconnaissance

Killian wants us to attack, but sometimes we don't have better blockers. Reconnaissance makes sure we still get the attack trigger and can pull our attacker back if things get dangerous.

Brilliant Wings

Flying and hexproof at instant speed for just two mana? And we can move it? Seems like a great add.

Spirit Loop

Drop this on a large creature we've goaded to watch our life total jump. And we get it back if it goes to the grave.

Black Market Connections and Smothering Tithe

These are extremely powerful enchantments that keep us fueled up with mana and cards. Easy adds.

Codsworth, Handy Helper

This Robot does a lot for us, from protecting Killian, to giving us two mana to cast Auras, to moving our Auras around. All very useful things.

Daxos the Returned

It only costs three mana to drop an enchantment creature token that gets bigger and bigger as the game goes on. I've seen many Commander games ending with Daxos making a handful of 9/9 tokens, and we can easily do the same with this deck.

Anointed Procession

This isn't exactly a token deck, but there's just enough of them to make this token-doubling enchantment worth a spot.

Hallowed Haunting

Speaking of which, here's some more tokens, in addition to a really strong anthem effect. Combine this with the Spirit tokens from Daxos the Returned and we'll be threatening lethal in no time.

Rashel, Fist of Torm

Not every game will warrant including this creature, as sometimes we'll be swinging out with an army of tokens ("going wide"). But sometimes the deck will have us going tall (attacking with one really large creature) rather than wide, and in those games Rashel is indispensable.

This is also easy to misread at first glance. With Rashel on the board, a single attacker will get +1/+1 for every single Aura we control.

Retether

Just a nice recursion piece when we need it.

Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines

There's a lot of enter the battlefield effects (ETB) in this deck, including Killian's. This version of Elesh Norn doubles our ETB effects, while shutting down our opponents'. This will hurt a lot of opponents' game plans.

Super State

When you're going tall, it's hard to top this Aura.

Raffine's Guidance and Sentinel's Eyes

It's nice that these are cheap, and that they come back. But they just don't do enough by themselves to warrant staying in the deck.

Intermediate Chirography

If this deck were more focused on making Inklings, I could see keeping this. But it really isn't, so it's taking up space for more enchantment-centric cards.

Keen Duelist

It's decent card advantage, but doesn't fit our strategy in any way.

Vanishing Verse

We need to ditch an instant-speed removal spell to make room for more enchantment-based removal.

Breena, the Demagogue and Shadrix Silverquill

Don't get me wrong, I love and play both of these creatures in my black/white political deck, but this deck is much more geared towards aggression than politics. So they don't make a ton of sense.

Fallen Ideal

This isn't an Aristocrats deck, so we won't always have creatures to sacrifice to make this worth including.

Nils, Discipline Enforcer

Another political legend that I'm a huge fan of, but just doesn't fit in this deck.

Screams from Within

If there are no 1/1s on our opponents' boards, this is basically a dead card.

Secret Rendezvous

We're moving away from the deck's political sub-theme, so this card is an easy cut.

Tomik, Wielder of Law

This isn't as good of a deterrent as it sounds on paper. Opponents can easily pay three life in the early game when life totals are high. They can also get around the trigger by just attacking us with one creature.

Ajani's Chosen

An army of 2/2s isn't a bad way to go, but we can do better.

Combat Calligrapher

The whole Inkling sub-theme doesn't really hold up with the main plan of the deck. So this is an easy cut.

Firemane Commando

We have better card draw options that fit our enchantment-centric game plan.