Secrets of Strixhaven releases everywhere April 24. Alongside the main set, there are five new Commander precons each with brand new cards. In this article, I’m going to review the Lorehold Spirit Precon deck, and discuss the best ways to upgrade it.
The Lorehold Spirit deck features Red-White graveyard synergies and Spirits as a theme. By combining efficient graveyard synergies with ways to buff spirit tokens and swing aggressively, this Lorehold deck uses lesser-travelled paths to victory for Red-White as a color pair. If you’re after something a little different, then this is the RW deck for you.
LOREHOLD SPIRIT NEW COMMANDERS
There are two new face cards for this precon: Quintorius, History Chaser and Excava, the Risen Past. As cool as Excava is – who doesn’t love a hasty Spirit Horse Search Results effect? – Quintorius is without a doubt the better option as a Commander here.
At four mana, and being something of an engine, rather than an impending clock of doom like many other ‘walkers, Quint should survive for longer on the field to make us plenty of 3/2 Spirit tokens. He helps us see more of our deck, get it into the graveyard, and then offers a win condition, too.
Excava wants us to build in another way, and incorporate a lot of flicker to get rid of the finality counters and grow out creatures back to full size. A modest $50 upgrade won’t do enough to give us a solid Excava deck here.
NEW CARDS IN LOREHOLD SPIRIT
Each precon in Secrets of Strixhaven features 12 brand-new cards – and you can read about the best of them in our Top 20 article.
Many of the exciting new offerings in Lorehold Spirit are, well, Spirits. Relic Retriever is a great mana engine that triggers multiple times a turn cycle; Spirit of Resilience can do silly things with Yidaro or even shuffle-Eldrazi Titans; Vanguard of the Restless is an anchorpoint for Spirit-heavy decks in white.
The new Turbulent lands are a hot pickup, with Turbulent Steppe debuting here alongside a reprint of the recently unveiled Glittering Massif and Radiant Summit, making the manabase here pretty dang great considering it also has Fabled Passage and Emeria, the Sky Ruin.
Speaking of Emeria, there’s some great value in the reprints here, with Bitterthorn, Nissa’s Animus, Moonshaker Cavalry and Currency Converter among the offerings.
Overall, Lorehold Spirit is an excellent precon out of the box, and a great choice for those after something different from a Boros deck. But what about upgrading it?
LOREHOLD SPIRIT INITIAL $50 BUDGET UPGRADE
Lorehold Spirit is a pretty well built preconstructed deck, and it doesn’t need massive amounts of tuning to make it hum. That said, we’re all about refining the experience, so we’ve put together some solid goals for the upgrades:
- Increased ramp to get Quintorius out reliably and do multi-spell turns
- Planeswalker synergies to help our Commander
- Synergistic ramp and card draw
- More ways to use the graveyard
At time of printing, we managed to fit a massive eighteen cards into this $50 upgrade, which you can view as a Moxfield Package for easy adding to your own decklist.
First up, the ramp. We added more mana rocks, including the Liquimetal Torque + Shenanigans engine which will help to trigger Quintorius. Getting Quint out and casting multiple spells a turn is crucial for us.
With our double-striking Spirits, Professional Face-Breaker can make us up to six treasures per combat, which is pretty nutty. If I could, I’d put Neyali into the deck for an extra source of double-strike, too. Knight of the White Orchid, Boros Garrison and Guildless Commons compliment our catch-up ramp, with Lotus Field already in the manabase. These can all be recurred by some of our recursion pieces, and bounce Witch Enchanter to our hand when we play it as an MDFC Land.
Incorporating card draw that synergizes with our graveyard-tokens strategy is a good plan, so with Bag of Holding, Caretaker’s Talent and Brass’s Tunnel-Grinder, we’re in a really good place.
Adding more Spirit-adjacent and Spirit cards was a no-brainer, too. Not Forgotten doubles as recursion if we put something on top of our library; Summoner’s Sending is a Spirit making engine that can keep triggering Quintorius; Nikko-Onna is repeatable Enchantment removal.
Although most Planeswalker synergy cards tend to be in the blue and green section of the color pie, I was determined to include what I could to bolster our Planeswalker led deck. Patrolling Peacemaker should keep Quint topped up to survive some attacks, allowing him to trigger more before he’s attacked off of the table. Onakke Oathkeeper and Jaya’s Phoenix, meanwhile, not only provide value in play, but can also do something from the graveyard, making them the perfect synergy cards for when we’re relying on Quintoirus.
Oh, and we obviously play my favorite mini-Sun Titan, Redemption Choir. Check out more about the Boros Advantage Engine, here.
Cards we cut are either less synergistic, or to balance our curve. A few of these were harder to cut than others, but by and large, they make great swaps.
You can view the cuts in the sideboard of the full decklist – Lorehold Spirit Upgraded – on Moxfield.
FURTHER UPGRADES
The sky is kinda the limit when it comes to upgrading this precon, as there are many, many more expensive RW cards to choose from.
The first thing on your shopping list should be a copy of a token doubler (or two!). These make the deck far more lethal, and if you pick Elspeth, you could even bake in something of a Superfriends Planeswalkers sub-theme, especially when it comes to those sweet Planeswalker synergy cards we put in the upgrade.
The best card draw and mana creatures in “Borehold” are tried and tested, and splashing out on a Tataru Taru, Esper Sentinel or even a Wheel of Fortune can help to make the deck a lot stronger and more consistent.
At the lower end of the scale, a cheeky Yidaro can provide a nice way to trigger Quintorius repeatedly (and give Spirit of Resilience something to change into). I also really like the idea of adding Drogskol Reinforcements and other protective pieces to let us play damage-based wraths like Chain Reaction and Blasphemous Act. Finally, if we’re into protecting Quint – and gumming up the ground – Luminarch Ascension could be pretty damn good in this build.
GAME CHANGERS
When adding Gamechangers to this deck, we want to prioritize mana and protection. Smothering Tithe, Teferi’s Protection and The One Ring are our Bracket 3 go-tos, and other than those, I’d look at Ancient Tomb next.
END STEP
The Lorehold Spirit precon deck is awesome, and as a red-white enjoyer, it’s been a lot of fun to test it and consider upgrades. I hope these modest upgrades bring a lot of life to your build, and inspire some further refinement of your own. Let us know what you’re adding, on socials.
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.