Aetherdrift Living Energy Precon Upgrade

The Aetherdrift Commander precons offer us a simple choice: Living Energy, or nonliving legions of zombies. This week we’re going with the first option, and running our race with the best pit crew of artificers and aethercrafters Kaladesh has to offer!

If you haven’t been paying close attention to the lore here, Aetherdrift is sneakily a “Return” set. The interplanar Great Race takes a course through familiar settings including Kaladesh and Amonkhet, which means these precons have a chance to revisit classic mechanics from those sets. It’s a good way to differentiate the decks in a set where the strong mechanical focus might otherwise leave the decks feeling too similar (and too close to what’s in the main set).

So, what is the Living Energy precon actually about?

MEET THE COMMANDERS

Saheeli, Radiant Creator

Saheeli is no longer a planeswalker, which ironically seems to have made her a much better commander.

If you’ve played energy decks before (or read my analysis of the mechanic from last week’s blog) then you know that just being a good energy generator is already enough to make a card valuable. Saheeli is one of only three eligible commanders who can generate an uncapped amount of energy per turn (the others being Fallout’s Dr. Madison Li and Nissa, Worldsoul Speaker from this same precon).

Triggering from artificer spells feels like mostly a flavor and feeling buff, especially since you still don’t get energy from casting Saheeli herself. But netting energy for each artifact spell is where the money’s at. Magic has a long history of decks built around casting free (or very cheap) artifacts, so there’s plenty of precedent we can look towards if we need tech to go all-in on Saheeli as our energy battery.

The Radiant Creator’s appeal only gets stronger when you consider her built-in option for spending energy. I wouldn’t be too bothered if we had to look for a secondary outlet as part of our gameplan. Cards like Primal Prayers, Aetherworks Marvel and the aforementioned Nissa are true gamewinners when you pair them with this kind of energy generation.

Still, it’s nice to know your commander can come down and impact the board all on their own, even if that’s only meant to be your backup plan. Well, Saheeli’s Plan B looks as strong as most decks’ Plan A! Being able to clone any permanent on your board can lead to any amount of explosive combos – especially since energy decks are already somewhat geared towards playing around ETB and LTB triggers.

At absolute dirt worst, you get to clone one of your lands to have +1 mana for the turn (or bash someone for 5, I suppose). But the expected return should be much higher: anything from generating a ton of energy with a 5/5 Empyreal Voyager up to immediately going off with a cloned Decoction Module or Aetherflux Conduit! 

Just remember not to target anything legendary, as this card goes against the grain of recent clone abilities being able to make nonlegendary copies – no breaking Gonti’s Aether Heart this time around.

Pia Nalaar, Chief Mechanic

Despite the obvious thematic ties and both mechanics originating from Kaladesh, energy cards and vehicles don’t really have any natural synergy. So I like the decision to include a backup commander who specifically bridges that gap, so anyone buying an Aetherdrift Commander deck based on the set’s Great Race aesthetic can keep their build firmly on-brand!

Pia’s energy generation is not as strong as Saheeli’s, and her way of spending it is not as flexible nor as explosive. But if you are going in heavily on a vehicles theme then these two abilities form an extremely consistent and efficient resource engine, and one which basically guarantees you’ll have other vehicles around to fuel your other synergies around the card type.

The fact you only create a token in your own end step makes it hard to see Pia as a true win condition like The Locust God or Sai, Master Thopterist. Even if you generated infinite energy to make a Star Destroyer-sized Aetherjet token, you’re still waiting until your next turn to kill somebody (unless you Fling it at them). But even if we just make a quick fleet of medium-to-large flyers, that can make us very difficult to attack while forcing opponents to respect our potential burst should they tap out – even through a sweeper. 

If we find ourselves in a spot where the energy is better spent on something else, well, Pia is still contributing with her first trigger (good for up to 6 energy per turn in a four-player game!) and we can just lock the second ability into spawning 1/1s as chump blockers and sac fodder.

NEW CARD REVIEW

Even if I’m excited about playing the precon as-built, it’s always important that these reviews consider the perspective of players who don’t need a whole new deck – but who could definitely be in the market for some powerful new spells if the synergy is right! For their sake, let’s quickly go through the most obviously powerful and interesting new printings from the Living Energy precon.

Nissa, Worldsoul Speaker

Nissa is back, good lord. In the 99 of our temur deck, without even really putting work into leveraging landfall, this already will be one of our better energy cards – as both generator and outlet. As the commander of a mono-green shell you immediately have a deadly engine which can win the game off Scapeshift and ramp spells. The biggest concern with playing monocolor decks around a niche mechanic like energy is the limited pool of cards available, but Nissa really patches any holes on both sides of your gameplan.

Aetheric Amplifier

Wizards’ latest innovation in the endless challenge to design attractive 3-cost mana rocks. I don’t know that the second ability has much infinite potential here just because it’s tough to convert energy into mana, but even activating it once at the right time could be extremely impactful (for instance, with a copy or two of Aether Revolt on deck).

Stridehangar Automaton

How excited are you to find out Academy Manufactor has this Kaladeshi cousin? Simply adding +1 artifact or permanent to any number of loops is the kind of game-winning value that makes cards into staples at this mana cost. The insane utility of getting a free 2/2 flyer out of any dinky little food- or clue- or treasure-making effect will ensure this card becomes a valuable chase rare for years to come.

Rampaging Aetherhood

If you think about how much mana it costs to get a large numeric value of something, power boosts are about as cheap as they come. So anything which converts power back into another resource is going to feel amazing. What’s really cool is how we can choose to re-invest our energy into the Aetherhood and receive compounding returns! Yes, this also means it’s effectively another Primordial Hydra for your Hydra-typal deck (and it’s even sillier than usual with Doubling Season).

Aetherflux Conduit

The obvious point of comparison for this card is Aetherflux Reservoir, and if that’s the case then we should show Conduit some serious respect from day 1. For just two more (easily discounted) generic mana, we go from generating life on each cast (almost never actively useful until we hit the lethal threshold) to generating energy. 

That’s a resource which actually helps us extend our turn to keep casting spells and developing our board, hopefully until we start profiting in energy or otherwise establish a loop. Even if we don’t win with Conduit right away, the energy will supercharge any other cards we have lying around, giving us even more potential to stumble on some kind of combo. Oh, and since this isn’t legendary it becomes one of the nastiest clone target for any deck that can use energy… or that needs to convert high “storm count” turns into wins in an unusual color identity.

$50 UPGRADE GUIDE

Trying to modify precons built around a less-established mechanic like energy can be a bit of a puzzle at times. I always start out by looking for easy cuts, cards from the stock list we can straightforwardly upgrade. But energy is still in a weird spot where the precon cards are more or less your strongest options, simply because they weren’t balanced around Standard power levels.

This means most of the cards we would be excited to add are more generic support effects, like Doubling Season… that are then usually too rich for our first budget re-fit of the deck.  Nevertheless, let’s take our best shot at isolating some cards from this precon list that we’re happy to leave in the dust:

• Combustible Gearhulk
• Elder Gargaroth
• Loyal Apprentice
• Pia and Kiran Nalaar
• Rampaging Aetherhood
• Duplicant
• Chain Reaction
• One with the Machine
• Explosive Vegetation
• Glimmer of Genius
• Adaptive Omnitool
• Bootleggers’ Stash
• Reckless Fireweaver
• Triplicate Titan
• Bespoke Battlewagon

None of these cards are necessarily bad, they just happen to be the least unique and essential effects for our gameplan. What plan is that, you ask? Well, since a $50 quick upgrade doesn’t really allow for me to fully transform the precon into an artifact-heavy “eggs” type pile, we’re just going to soup up what the stock list already aims to do. 

We’ve already got a virtually complete set of the best energy-generating creatures, and the beginnings of some potential bounce loops with the likes of Aethersquall Ancient, Aethertide Whale, Nissa, Worldsoul Speaker and Panharmonicon. Luckily there’s some really high-impact cards we can add to get a lot more consistent in setting up these loops for relatively few slots. 

Honourable mention to Cloudstone Curio, which is another S-grade effect in this category but ended up being squeezed out on price after I blew over 66% of our budget on one card…

Doubling Season. It’s a testament to the current reprint policy that this uber-staple is within our price range at all, and this is one deck where I think the Season really adds fun factor as well as raw power. We can’t really do much to improve the choice of energy-generating creatures available, so playing force multipliers like Doubling Season and Inexorable Tide is our best way to make the energy flow more plentifully.

Lastly, we want to round out the slightly narrow range of ETB effects and utility available in the stock list. Eternal Witness in particular is a must-have for decks trying to win through this kind of endgame. Amped Raptor plus Primal Prayers gives us another energy-only way to cast our whole deck and win. Behemoth of Vault 0 is a decent one-off energy boost and gives us another way to snipe random permanents, particularly when cloned by Saheeli. Speaking of winning and cards to clone with Saheeli… Aether Revolt isn’t just the name of a set…

You can check out the full decklist on Moxfield with my changes here!

TAKE MY ENERGY

As I mentioned in my energy retrospective last week, I am a big fan of the mechanic and especially its potential to unlock very fun, creative, detailed gameplay. 

This is now the third time in recent memory Wizards have gone back to the well to make an energy-themed Commander precon, but I’m still just as excited by the ideas on display here. I especially like how closely Living Energy hews to the original feeling and gameplay goals of the first Temur Energy decks in Standard; all ETBs and death triggers and accruing profitable value.

But that doesn’t mean that you’re locked into keeping it that way – despite the high number of energy-focused creatures, I don’t think it would be too difficult to push things more towards the artifact- or vehicle-centric builds I’ve alluded to throughout this review. Saheeli’s dynamic genius is truly unlimited in its potential – and now you can prove it to your friends on the racetrack OR battlefield!