Budget Brew-tality: Blight Curse Precon Upgrade Guide

Welcome to the first edition of Budget Brew-tality, the series where we take a low-priced precon deck and power it up to Bracket 3 (or higher) on as slim a budget as possible. Today we're upgrading Lorwyn Eclipsed's Blight Curse precon, currently selling for as low as $32 online. We'll be swapping out 30 cards for 30 powerful and cheap staples that not only power up this deck, but are easily compatible in your future brews. The total cost of our upgrades is only $33.

Let's begin by cracking open the digital deckbox and looking at what comes in this precon:

Keep It in the Family

We'll keep Auntie Ool, Cursewretch as this deck's commander. Her primary function is her triggered ability. When one or more -1/-1 counters are put on a creature, if we control that creature, we get to draw a card. If it's an opponent's creature being blighted with -1/-1s, that opponent loses one life. This is especially punishing for go-wide token players when we cast a spell like Black Sun's Zenith, and very beneficial to us when we have a lot of creatures in play. Putting a -1/-1 counter on all of our creatures at once means we get to draw that many cards. In practice, that can mean drawing a new hand of seven cards. Even drawing five or six cards is a huge swing in card advantage in our favor.

This Goblin Warlock also has a non-trivial protection ability. In order for our opponents to target her, they must put two -1/-1 counters on a creature they control. That creature doesn't have to have two toughness, but they do need to control a creature in the first place.

No longer a member of royalty, The Reaper, King No More drops a -1/-1 counter on each of up to two target creatures when he enters the battlefield. His static ability is a weakened version of Necroskitter's ability; if a creature an opponent controls dies with a -1/-1 counter on it, we return it to the battlefield under our control. Notably, this doesn't let us take control of an opponent's commander, because they can choose to send their commander to the command zone. The Reaper and Necroskitter rely on the commander entering the graveyard to trigger their ability, but by the time that ability has a chance to resolve, the opponent can move their commander back to safety in the command zone.

Auntie the Infinite

Out of the box, this precon is infamous for having an infinite combo that we'll cover later. However, outside of that potential for infinite recursion, many of the cards are far below modern rate for value and synergy. Some cards encourage us to do combat damage to other creatures by giving our creatures wither, which is essentially telling us to ask our opponents nicely if they'll enable our -1/-1 counter payoffs by blocking our creatures instead of taking our meager attack damage. This deck's average power level is below the baseline for modern precons, and we've got a lot of changes to make, but we'll make them with cheap staple cards with broad applications, which you can always use in other decks in the future.

We're going to bring some powerful Aristocrat payoffs, enablers, and combos into this deck. Our -1/-1 counters synergies have some overlap with Aristocrat decks' penchant for killing off their own creatures, and it's a strong archetype in Bracket 3. So let's get a little aristocratic.

A Sacrifice I'm Willing to Make

These three cards represent the major pillars of what Aristocrat strategies need. Korvold, Fae-Cursed King provides both a sacrifice outlet (a way to sacrifice creatures when we want to) and a way to draw more cards. Ophiomancer provides us with some sacrifice fodder at every player's upkeep. Cauldron of Essence makes players lose life each time one of our creatures dies, and as an added bonus, can sacrifice a creature to bring a creature from the graveyard to the battlefield at sorcery speed. These are some of the heaviest hitters in Aristocrat decks, and thanks to recent reprints (and Cauldron's first printing), they are all available for relatively cheap.

Value Wherever We Can Get It

The stock decklist includes several fetchlands like Evolving Wilds, and three bouncelands like Golgari Rot Farm. It's not clear why, so I gave them a purpose: Landfall. Tireless Provisioner and Tireless Tracker give us value just for having lands enter the battlefield, either in the form of Treasure tokens, Food tokens (which you almost never need), or Clue tokens from the Tracker to give us card advantage at a small cost.

Morbid Opportunist has been reprinted a lot recently and is maintaining a very low price for a good triggered draw ability. It triggers only once per turn, but for its low mana cost, and with the ability to trigger on opponents' turns, Morbid Opportunist will almost always go card-positive and pay back the initial investment.

I included additional card draw engines more specific to this deck's counter theme. Generous Patron has us draw a card for putting counters on opponents' creatures, which isn't so generous when those are -1/-1 counters but we'll take the card draw all the same.

Gristle Glutton is good card selection, and its downside of having you blight 1 becomes an upside when Auntie Ool is in play. When activating Gristle Glutton with Auntie Ool on the battlefield, first we'll put a -1/-1 counter on a creature as a cost to activate its ability, and then Auntie Ool will trigger with the activated ability still on the stack. This means we'll first draw a card with Auntie Ool, then discard a card to draw a card with Gristle Glutton. This is generally the order that benefits us the most anyway, as we want to see more cards before deciding which one to discard.

Shadow Urchin also gives us a way to blight our own creatures for profit, and when they die with -1/-1 counters on them, we get an impulse draw equal to the number of counters they had when they died. This will hopefully dig deep enough into our library to find one of our combos.

Skullclamp is one of the best card draw engines ever printed, and thanks to recent reprints it's very affordable and worth the long-term investment. Malevolent Rumble out-values most cards that dig through the top four or five cards of the library because we can keep any permanent card, and it gives us a 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn token as a cherry on top. Commune with the Gods digs one card deeper, lacks the bonus Eldrazi Spawn, but lets us put any creature or enchantment from the top five cards of our library into our hand. Most of our infinite combo lines include an enchantment, so this is the perfect pairing of card types to dig for.

Greater than the Sum of its Parts

Let's start our combo section off with the one that comes in the box.

The steps to this combo are as follows:

1. Have Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons, Blowfly Infestation, and Grave Venerations in play along with two 1/1s on the battlefield.
2. Give a -1/-1 counter to the first 1/1 creature (possibly with Hapatra's combat damage trigger).
3. Hapatra triggers, creating a 1/1 Snake token, and Blowfly Infestation triggers, putting a -1/-1 counter on the second 1/1 creature. You cannot choose the Snake that Hapatra just created as a target because both triggers entered the stack at the same time. Grave Venerations also triggers and deals one damage to each opponent and you gain one life.
4. The second 1/1 creature dies, triggering Hapatra, Blowfly Infestation, and Grave Venerations.
5. Blowfly Infestation puts a -1/-1 counter on the Snake that was already in play and Hapatra makes a new Snake.
6. The Snake token dies. Hapatra, Blowfly Infestation, and Grave Venerations all trigger again.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 as many times as you want.

This is a reasonably easy combo to pull off, but it's certainly not quick, and drawing all three of these cards is largely a matter of luck. We're going to tip the scales a little bit in our favor.

To increase the chance of this combo's success, we'll increase the redundancy and add some tutors where we can.

Nest of Scarabs can take the place of Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons in the combo outlined above. Zulaport Cutthroat, as well as Bastion of Remembrance and Vengeful Bloodwitch, can take the place of the single copy of Grave Venerations we were hoping to draw before. Then, to find one of our key missing pieces, cards like Dina's Guidance and Lively Dirge can tutor up a creature, and in Lively Dirge's case, put it straight into play.

But let's not stop at just one combo.

This is a low-cost mono-black combo that allows us to infinitely sacrifice our Putrid Goblin. Each time it re-enters the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it, Thran Vigil will trigger, allowing us to put a +1/+1 counter on Putrid Goblin, and the two counters will cancel themselves out, meaning Putrid Goblin's persist ability is back online when it dies yet again.

Viscera Seer is a one-mana free sacrifice outlet that's a staple in many Aristocrat decks. The other option at the one-mana slot is Carrion Feeder, but besides its heftier price tag, I prefer the card selection Viscera Seer offers over the potential one-hit kill from having an infinitely large Carrion Feeder. All it takes is one creature to blank an attack for an infinite amount of combat damage that has no trample.

This combo also has some redundancy in the decklist. Rendclaw Trow is another persist creature that can take Putrid Goblin's place. It even has wither so if it ever gets in a position to deal combat damage to a creature, it can synergize with our -1/-1 counter payoffs.

Umbral Collar Zealot can take Viscera Seer's place as the sacrifice outlet. For an additional mana, he offers a lot more utility by being able to surveil and being a much larger 3/2 body.

Finally, to make this combo actually lethal, we now have a wider selection of effects that deal damage to opponents each time one of these persist creatures takes a quick trip to the graveyard. Grave Venerations will do the trick, but so will Bastion of Remembrance, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Vengeful Bloodwitch.

One more combo for the road; these two cards together wipe out each opponent's board. Cast Flourishing Defenses first, then when High Perfect Morcant enters the battlefield, each opponent has to blight 1. For each creature that got a -1/-1 counter this way, we will create a 1/1 green Elf token, which will then trigger Morcant again and have our opponents blight that many times. We should be left with a handful of Elf tokens and a 4/4 cloven-hoofed Elf Noble to put some pressure on the board before they rebuild. We can even restart the chain reaction at any time by putting a single -1/-1 counter on any creature to melt our opponents' boards down again.

Deflection and Recursion

Our combo lines are easily disrupted by instant-speed removal, if we're unlucky enough to be playing at a table of responsible opponents, so some back-up is a good idea.

Return the Favor is a recently-reprinted deflection card that can redirect a single spell or ability to any target of your choice. This can even blank a counterspell aimed at one of our combo pieces; cast Return the Favor with the "change the target of target spell or ability with a single target" mode, change the counterspell's target to Return the Favor, then Return the Favor resolves, the counterspell fizzles since Return the Favor is no longer on the stack, and our combo piece is free to land on the battlefield and wreak havoc.

Unnatural Restoration's proliferation goes nicely with the counters theme, but also brings back any permanent from our graveyard to our hand, which will likely be either a creature or an enchantment that we need to complete a combo that might've gotten swept away in a sweeper or removed with timely spot removal.

Cauldron of Essence earns another mention as a way to recur creatures in our graveyard who might be key to completing a combo. This card fills several roles in our plan quite nicely and I can't recommend it enough in this deck, or any deck that runs an Aristocrats strategy or sacrifices creatures for value.

Low Curve Considerations

I decided to cut two lands for Llanowar Elves and Sakura-Tribe Elder. Our curve is incredibly low, and the stock list didn't come with much in the way of mana ramp. Auntie Ool is fine on turn four, but even better on turn three because she sets up a follow-up play of putting counters on creatures.

Cursed Cards

It's time to look at our cuts. Some of these were tough calls, others were incredibly easy. This is where the deck in its preconstructed form really faltered and failed to tie the -1/-1 synergies together.

These are the three that were the toughest to cut. Chimil, the Inner Sun provides a lot of value but its mana cost is too steep, and whatever the discover trigger finds on the end step may or may not be well-timed. This isn't a simple aggro deck that wants to flood the board.

There weren't enough counters being spread around to justify running Evolution Sage, who finds a better home in infect, planeswalker, or +1/+1 counter strategies.

Glissa Sunslayer is the best defender ever printed, but her payoff for attacking is pretty limited. Certain decks can make great use of her but this one can't.

Here's the complete list of cards I cut:

• Binding the Old Gods
• Burning Curiosity
• Carnifex Demon
• Cathartic Pyre
• Chain Reaction
• Chimil, the Inner Sun
• Commander's Sphere
• Contagion Clasp
• Eventide's Shadow
• Everlasting Torment
• Evolution Sage
• Ferrafor, Young Yew
• Glissa Sunslayer
• Grave Titan
• Grim Poppet
• Harmonize
• Hoarder's Greed
• Incremental Blight
• Lasting Tarfire
• Liliana, Death Wielder
• Massacre Girl, Known Killer
• Midnight Banshee
• Nesting Grounds
• Path of Ancestry
• Puppeteer Clique
• Skinrender
• Tree of Perdition
• Vraska, Betrayal's Sting
• Wickerbough Elder
• Wickersmith's Tools

Blessed Revisions

Here's the full decklist for Auntie the Infinite:

Try this brutal budget brew at a Bracket 3 table. Play it online first in our full-table Playtester or in a game with others in our Play Online lobbies!

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