Abzan Armor is the green white and black precon from Tarkir: Dragonstorm. It features creatures with high toughness, creatures with defender, and leveraging those blockers by granting them the ability to attack. Your army of walls and other slow moving behemoths can then apply high damage due to their aggressively costed high toughness, while Felothar draws you a fresh hand when you need it. Our $50 budget upgrade manages to slam in a massive fifteen upgrades.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm has a whopping five precons this time around: Abzan Armor, Jeskai Striker, Sultai Arisen, Mardu Surge, and Temur Roar. Today we’ll be checking out the Abzan precon (green, white and black). If it’s your first time enjoying a visit to Tarkir, then the names of the clans will perhaps be familiar. They were adopted to describe the five 3-color wedges of the color pie.
Man the barricades – it’s time to bolster our forces with the Abzan Armor Budget Upgrade.
ABZAN ARMOR: FELOTHAR THE STEADFAST
Riding into battle upon a throne upon a beastie is Felothar the Steadfast. Felothar is one of the strongest designs of the precon Commanders this time around, and it’s because you get so much synergy on one card.
Not only do you get the assigning combat damage according to toughness, and attacking even with defender, but you get card draw on top. And that’s not even as limited as Arcades, the Strategist’s card draw. No, you get to sacrifice something and more or less refill your hand. Nuts!
Alternate Commander Betor, Ancestor’s Voice takes the deck in an entirely different direction. It asks you to be gaining and losing life in equal measures to trigger their abilities for maximal value. This creature is good, and the deck you can build with it is certainly interesting, but its both far less supported in the precon stock list, and also provides anti-synergy in the form of +1/+1 counters in small amounts, which aren’t really what we want.
As such, we’re going all-in on Felothar today.
YOU SAY YOU LIKE LARGE BEHINDS, NO CAP?
Abzan Armor features 10 new designs, and there’s some really powerful stuff to check out. I covered the highlight cards from the Precons in this article here, but let’s look at a few of them here too.
Reunion of the House is perfect for any Walls or Defender deck, giving you unparalleled recursion power that’s one sided. A great add, all told.
Protector of the Wastes is a slightly cheaper Angel of the Ruins, which for reanimator or blink decks in white might be just what you need. The restriction to different players makes this a little worse than Angel of the Ruins, but the monstrosity ability to go again makes up for it somewhat.
Jaws of Defeat is a sweet win condition for all of these big butts decks. It’s like having access to a Terror of the Peaks or Warstorm Surge, which are cards I’m always keen on having in any aggressive deck.
Three mana wipes are always worth a look, and a Toxic Deluge that’s soft-capped in the early to mid-game is especially interesting. It doesn’t ask you to pay life, but just sacrifice a creature, which is a reasonable ask.
The Dog Druid is getting everyone excited, given it’s another generator of big bundles of mana (looking at you, Selvala Heart of the Wilds). This one is most likely to see play outside of these Walls/Defender builds.
REPRINTS THAT COMPLEAT ME
Ignoring the irreverent Zetalpa, there are some juicy picks in here.
Staff of Compleation has been trending upwards, and for good reason: it’s a really efficient way to proliferate. It does other stuff too, right?
Indomitable Ancients sees the first reprint… well, ever?
Weathered Sentinels is just a solid card even outside of this kind of build, given it can contribute to keyword soup strategies, politics heavy decks, and artifact decks.
Dragons are very much in vogue right now, so seeing two popular ones that can shift the tempo of a game in this precon is a treat. You can maybe even shuffle them right out and across into a dragon themed deck.
One of the strongest and most in-demand cards in the precon might be Seedborn Muse. It’s a kill-on-sight kinda card, so be prepared for interaction. Great for higher power gameplay though.
ABZAN ARMOR: $50 FOR 15 BUDGET UPGRADES
When looking at upgrade plans for this precon, I had to ditch the lifegain subtheme. It took up a lot of space, and was mostly there to give the alternate Commander enough cards to do something with the stock list. Alongside these easier cuts, I cut a further 7-8 cards for a total of 15, yes fifteen cuts. You’re getting 15 upgrades for $50 this time around, which is serious value.
I’ve decided to add cards that:
- Promote one-sided reanimation and board clears
- Draw us cards
- Protect our boardstate
- Give us even more reach with an “alternate” win condition
View the Abzan Armor Upgrade Package on Moxfield
First up, some low drops that do a lot more than the ones we’re cutting. One of them – Shield Sphere – even costs 0 mana!
Crystal Barricade protects the board from red boardwipes and sources of damage like fight spells and such, while giving you hexproof from spells that target you specifically (which happens more than you think). Flumph is some nice card draw which people are always greedy enough to enable.
Being able to attack with impunity is what makes this deck so good, so adding more Skulk from MacCready, Lamplight Mayor helps a lot. Ohran Frostfang’s deathtouch does something similar, while also giving us card draw.
Drawing cards is great, actually – so here’s two all stars in this build. A way to refill the hand and get a chunk of life back, and a way to draw cards that also makes Walls?! Sweet.
There’s also Fecund Greenshell, which is both an anthem and a way to ramp lands into play or draw cards.
I’m all about one-sided wipes and recursion, so Dusk // Dawn and Nethroi, Apex of Death slot right into this build to make sure we keep coming back for more, while dishing out the pain.
Do you remember Essence of Antiquity from MKM? Yeah, me neither until I wrote this article. But it’s a fantastic protection spell and trick, isn’t it?
You can probably recall me saying I wanted to add a card with more reach to help us win – that’s Psychosis Crawler. Thanks to Felothar’s Ability, we can regularly dish out 4-6+ damage with this every single turn cycle. Heck, with Seedborn Muse in play? That kills people quick.
Check out the Upgraded Abzan Armor Precon on Moxfield
You can find the final list with upgrades slotted in, and cuts in the sideboard, on the Moxfield link above. The cuts were the usual suspects – expensive to cast cards, low impact low drops, and suboptimal removal. A good chunk of cuts were cards better suited to a Betor build.
FURTHER UPGRADES
Some of these cards a little pricey for a $50 budget, but also… going for more than fifteen cuts to start with is very ambitious.
Tree of Perdition is the counterpart to Tree of Redemption, and setting someone to 13 life always feels strong.
Abzan for a 0/5 with a crucial piece of text if our Commander is removed is a useful three drop to consider.
I love The Battle of Bywater, and I should really play it in more decks. It fits great in this build, especially if you do keep some of the lifegain stuff.
Concerning the topic of Hobbits, Sting is a perfect equipment for Felothar, granting you a way to draw cards every turn.
Birds of Paradise will probably always be among the pricier mana dorks, but it’s for good reason. In this deck it even satisfies the Power<Toughness divide.
LTR keeps giving, and Last March of the Ents proves to be a powerful advantage engine and finisher all in one.
Game Changer wise, it’s Teferi’s Protection I’m really interested in for this list. It remains the best way to keep your board and not lose the game.
END STEP
Abzan Armor is a sweet precon if you like to play with slightly weirder strategies. “Big butts” is admittedly on the more popular off-the-wall strategies, and this precon does a lot to bolster its effectiveness in Abzan.. The precon is strong out of the box, and with some upgrades, it can really hold its own.
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.