With each new set comes new Commander precon decks to review, and this week we’re breaking down the gameplay and decklist of the new black deck, Wretched Ranks! 

AN INTRODUCTION TO NECROMANCY

Despite releasing alongside the Reality Fracture set, Wretched Ranks is actually billed as a Foundations precon – there’s no new Jace-related cards in this one, just the groaning dead!

The role of Commander precon decks has gradually evolved to meet community demand. If you bought a precon in the last five years, you essentially got a finished deck right out of the box: powerful, complicated, and often with a specialized theme to set it apart from the ever-growing library of other precons. 

In general this was a good change and has kept precon decks relevant. But there is still some demand for a true introductory Commander product, something with a price point and complexity more palatable to beginners. This is the niche Wretched Ranks and the other Foundations precons are here to fill. Each deck is just one color, themed around classic mechanics and creatures to clearly establish that color’s identity. 

These decks are also 100% made up of reprinted cards, which should spare them from scalpers and allow them to be sold at a bargain price point compared to other precons. It’s a great move to ensure that our most popular format has an easy on-ramp, especially one that grounds beginners in Magic’s own flavor and characters.

So how well does Wretched Ranks rate as the “foundational” Black deck? Let’s take a closer look…

MAKING THE MOST OF ZOMBIES

The primary theme which connects the cards in Wretched Ranks is the zombie creature type. The majority of your creature cards are zombies, and you also have spells which create zombies as token creatures – letting you raise a shambling horde of bodies with just a couple of cards!

A consistent theme like this makes a deck fun and memorable to play, but it’s also a strategic advantage. Cards like Patchwork Banner are strongest when all your creatures are the same type. Others specifically buff your zombie-type creatures, like Liliana’s Mastery or Endless Ranks of the Dead.

Considering how big your zombie army can get, even a minor boost to their individual stats will be multiplied into very large damage numbers, and with the damage spread out over so many bodies your opponents’ blockers will only absorb a small fraction of the total.

All-out assaults with tens or hundreds of zombies are definitely the most consistent way for this kind of deck to win. But that’s not the only way for a talented black mage to get the most out of their undead servitors. Zombie tokens are cheap and easily replenished, making them perfect fuel for various black magic effects which call on you to sacrifice your own creatures as part of the cost. Even your non-token zombie cards can often be re-reanimated or have other types of ability which reward you when they end up in your graveyard.

Each sacrificed zombie will only pay the cost for one of your abilities, but you can still “double up” your rewards with cards that trigger when a zombie dies, such as Headless Rider. If your opponents don’t stop you, you can put together a whole production-line of undeath.

For example: with Diregraf Colossus out, casting a Gravecrawler produces a bonus zombie token. If you also have Carrion Feeder you can immediately chow down on that Gravecrawler to make the Feeder bigger, then re-cast it from your graveyard (using its ability) and get another zombie token. Repeat as many times as you like for a big army and one REALLY big Carrion Feeder.

The two best traits of zombie armies are overwhelming numbers and expendability. And no other card captures those strengths quite so well as the commander of the Wretched Ranks precon: Ghoulcaller Gisa.

MAKING THE MOST OF GISA

Ghoulcaller Gisa is very near and dear to my heart: I have personally been running her as a commander since the card was first printed in a Commander 2014 precon deck. 

A native of Magic’s gothic-horror setting Innistrad, Gisa and her brother Geralf represent two opposite approaches to making undead. Where Geralf is famous for scientifically stitching together “skaabs” from different bits of dead flesh, Gisa takes a more loose, artistic attitude. She literally whistles corpses up from their grave, effortlessly raising a legion to serve the whims of their gothic girlboss!

When it comes to gameplay, Gisa’s sole downside is not being a zombie herself. But not being able to benefit from our zombie-specific buffs rarely matters – Gisa really isn’t a “lead from the front” kinda gal. While the rest of your army charges mindlessly into battle, she sits back and waits for the best chance each round to activate her ghoul-calling ability.

If you read that ability, you’ll notice that even in the worst-case scenario where Gisa has nothing to sacrifice except her own zombie tokens you’re still turning one token into two. But it gets much, much more efficient than that! The bigger the creature you sacrifice to Gisa, the more tokens she makes. This is where stacking buffs on your zombie army really starts to matter.

Say you have Lord of the Undead, Bad Moon and Cemetery Reaper all in play, each granting constant +1/+1 stats to all zombies you control. Now your standard-issue 2/2 zombie token is pumped up to a 5/5, so we can sacrifice it to Gisa and get five zombies back. Of course our buff effects are still active… so we’ve managed to create 25 power of zombies from a single 2/2 token!

If you haven’t managed to stack these buffs yet, then your ideal sacrifice is a creature like Diregraf Colossus or Wight of Precinct Six, which have special abilities to inflate their stats even without outside help. In a longer multiplayer game Wight can easily be a 10 or 20 power creature for just two mana, letting Gisa flood the battlefield with a single activation.

The bottom line: unless your opponents fight tooth and nail to keep Gisa off the battlefield, just keep sacrificing your largest zombies to grow those Wretched Ranks.

UPGRADING ON A BUDGET ($15 OR LESS)

Despite being positioned as an “entry-level” precon deck, this is not a weak or uninteresting list to play out of the box. Focusing on zombie synergies helps the deck punch above its weight and perceived budget. Since most of these cards are only really usable in a dedicated zombie deck, they’re much less in-demand than a card of equivalent power that isn’t theme-dependent.

This is great news – you shouldn’t need to worry about Wretched Ranks or the other Foundations precons getting bullied by “normal” precons at the table. But there’s always room for some improvement, and spending even a few extra dollars to replace a few bottom-rung cards from the stock list can give your new precon a huge boost!

The #1 top tech that I think is missing from the stock list of Wretched Ranks is equipment. We already talked about how powerful it is to combine stat buffing effects with Gisa’s sacrifice ability, letting you turn one zombie into many. Well, equipment can grant some of the most efficient stat buffs in the game, and it can do that every turn – sometimes barely even costing mana.

Lashwrithe and Bonehoard can give huge power boosts on an empty board and come with an initial free body to sacrifice thanks to Living Weapon, making them ideal for recovering after a boardwipe. Crown of Gondor and Stoneforge Masterwork scale with the number of zombies in play (meaning they double in value every turn you combine them with Gisa) and are very mana efficient. Dissection Tools doesn’t pack quite the same punch, but it does also provide a source of lifegain AND a sacrifice outlet, which happen to also be top priorities for our upgrade.

Lifegain is tricky to put a value on in Commander, where a lot of decks win through combos or other paths which make your life total irrelevant. But if you truly play without valuing your life, you’ll drop low enough to be finished off by some random damage or opportunistic strike.

Wretched Ranks also includes a LOT of cards which cost you life to use or otherwise deal damage to the user. “Greatness, at any cost” may be black’s unofficial motto, but that argument only works if you live long enough to reach greatness. I’d rather play a small handful of cards which can each gain a ton of life than try and build in lots of minor life sources. 

Disciple of Bolas and Disciple of Griselbrand both want us to sacrifice a big creature to maximize healing – something we’re already building the deck to be good at for Gisa’s sake. Giving lifelink with Dissection Tools to our buffed-up zombies is another way to convert big stats into healing. Even just finding one of these cards in a game should help get you out of “easy target” range and ensure you’re not concerned about paying for your blood-fuelled spells and abilities.

With the last bit of our $15 budget, I’d like to squeeze in a bit more “velocity” – a strategic concept which simply describes how quickly a deck can draw (or otherwise gain the ability to see and cast) new cards from its library.

Black is one of the best colors at this, since it often treats the graveyard like a second hand to play from, and milling yourself is more mana-efficient than drawing normally. Cemetery Tampering and Umbral Collar Zealot help get cards into our yard without needing to pay for and play them. Once you get something cool into your graveyard, Gravespawn Sovereign and Phyrexian Reclamation can get it right back out. Remember, you can tap zombie tokens to activate Sovereign as soon as Gisa makes them, even if they’re summoning sick! 

The last priority to include would be sacrifice outlets. Sometimes you have an effect like Gray Merchant of Asphodel and your best way to re-use it is simply kill the creature and play it again from the graveyard. Or you splash out for an expensive card like Grave Pact that triggers whenever your zombies die. Luckily, we’ve already found ways to squeeze in some more ways to sacrifice creatures while addressing our other needs: Dissection Tools, Umbral Collar Zealot, and both Disciples are very efficient for this.

With these key areas improved, the Wretched Ranks deck is much more well-rounded and has fewer potential pitfalls for a new player to fall into. And all without busting Card Kindgom’s $15 upgrade budget! If you’re trying to spend a bit more money on the deck, I would start by looking at Whip of Erebos and Wand of Orcus – high-impact cards which fit perfectly with the strategic needs of the Wretched Ranks deck.

As for what cards to drop in order to fit these upgrades in, I think that to some degree you can make your own choices – there’s not any special cards which are deeply essential to Wretched Ranks that you can’t afford to take out. But these are what I’ll be cutting to make the changes I mentioned above:

• God-Eternal Bontu
• Josu Vess, Lich Knight
• Liliana’s Reaver
• Razorlash Transmogrant
• Eternal Taskmaster
• Open the Graves
• Infernal Idol
• Marchesa’s Decree
• Moan of the Unhallowed
• Sign in Blood
• Syphon Flesh

You can explore the upgraded decklist in full detail over on Moxfield by following this link!

SHE’S GOT THAT GRAVEYARD CHIC

I’m delighted to see Ghoulcaller Gisa selected to lead the foundational black Commander deck. Sacrifice effects and zombies are certainly core to black’s color identity, but going with a sacrifice effect which cares about the stats of what you sacrifice is so much more interesting, setting up tons of big play moments for Wretched Ranks players to savor in-game.

From what I understand these Foundations precons are balanced to be played against each other. I know that I’m considering picking up a set of five and keeping them around as a teaching aid for any new friends who want to learn Magic through Commander. They also make great gifts for new players for the same reason. 

But upon review, I’m just as happy to recommend Wretched Ranks to experienced players who just want an easy base to try out a zombie deck: the power level is good enough, and the price point makes it easier to recommend as a starting point for further deckbuilding. Enjoy your new Commander this Halloween, boys and ghouls!