Debate Prep: Silverquill Influence Precon Upgrade Guide

The new Silverquill Influence precon, releasing later this month with Secrets of Strixhaven proper, is a contender for the best precon of the cycle and possibly one of the best precons of the last several years. How many times can I say "Land Tax in a precon" before the dead horse is sufficiently beaten?

If you want to tune the decklist so you're ready with some new tech when you pick up the precon for yourself, you're in the right place for some inspiration. The goal of today's article is to teach you how to play the deck, identify the strengths and weaknesses, and find ten cards to cut and ten cards to add to make the deck run more smoothly overall. While I won't be operating under a strict budget, I like to make sure that my suggestions for initial precon upgrades are accessible to players of any spending capability. I will be keeping each individual upgrade around or below the $5 TCGplayer price point, and will suggest some bigger-budget upgrades later on in this guide. Let's get prepared for the big debate!

Argumentation Plans

To begin with, let's go over what you receive when you buy the Silverquill Influence preconstructed Commander deck:

• 1 Ready-to-play 100-card Commander deck
• 1 Traditional foil face commander with borderless art
• 1 Traditional foil featured commander with borderless art
• 98 Non-foil cards, including 10 new-to-Magic cards
• 10 Double-sided tokens
• 1 Deck box

If public speaking makes you nervous, you can always take this precon for a spin on the Playtester mode or multiplayer platform on EDHLAB. Add this precon to your collection by marking it as a favorite in the Precon Decks section, and it will be available as an option when you fire up either of the gamemodes.

The face commander for this deck is Killian, Decisive Mentor:

The featured "backup" commander is Scriv, the Obligator:

As is usually the case, the face commander of the deck is the best option to use as you proceed with upgrades for this deck. Killian is a powerful political tool that can force your opponents' creatures to attack and pressure your other opponents, leaving you free from combat damage anxiety to manipulate the board. His ability can even be used offensively because it taps the creature that it goads to lock down blockers standing between you and your opponents' precious faces.

Additionally, he rewards you for placing enchantments on creatures other than your own by drawing you cards whenever any creature bearing one of your Auras attacks. Though you'll be keeping the most powerful Auras for your own creatures, you can attach simple buffs to your opponents' creatures that will generate extra value as they smash into your other opponents, provided you are making sure to reapply the goad condition (unless, of course, you use some of the Auras that permanently goad creatures). Let's dive in to some of the best cards already in the deck so you know what to look for in your games.

Impactful Talking Points

Coercive Impetus rolls all of Killian's benefits into a single package. The Impetus category of Aura spells gives a power/toughness boost to the enchanted creature and goads them, freeing up Killian triggers to be used on other non-goaded creatures, and the second ability doubles up on Killian's draw trigger at the cost of negligible life loss to allow you to continue churning through your deck.

Flickering Ward is another double duty spell for Killian. First, the Aura serves as a proactive but incomplete countermeasure against removal spells by applying single-color protection to the enchanted creature. Usually white and black pack the most efficient single-target removal for creatures, but you need to make sure to evaluate the pod for color distribution to make an informed decision. Second, you can use the enchantment's activated ability to return it to your hand for a single white mana (and costs only a single white mana to cast as well), allowing you to repeatedly and efficiently recast the spell to trigger Killian's goad ability.

Once your opponents start to crumble to the pressure of creatures you don't directly control, those creatures will be forced to come in your direction. Fortunately, Eriette of the Charmed Apple solves this problem by preventing them from attacking you at all, and even gives you a little bit of extra lifegain while draining your remaining opponents further as a bonus.

I've discussed a few cards that give incremental advantages, so let's look at some cards that will actually allow you to seal the deal and win the game. Eidolon of Countless Battles is one such card, granting a large buff to any creature it enchants equal to the number of Auras you control. With 21 of them in the stock list, you can quickly accumulate a setup to take opponents out with a single swing after tapping down their blockers with Killian.

If there's a card beside Eiganjo Dynastorian that will be a contender for best new staple for Enchantress decks, it's Herald of Amity. Without any changes to this specific decklist, Herald will hit an aura off the top of the library over 88% of the time at minimum, assuming you've drawn a couple of Auras by the time you cast it. That probability can go even higher with some modifications. Herald also has an evasive body and confers a power/toughness buff with a huge ceiling considering the deck is built around Auras. Make absolutely sure to get a copy for any Aura-focused Enchantress deck, whether you buy this precon or not.

Speaking Strategy

Now that you have a better understanding of how your prebuilt deck wins games out of the box, let's discuss some of the goals of upgrading the deck.

At the outset, one thing this precon lacks is Aura spells that massively buff a single creature. While these types of enchantments normally appear in Voltron-style decks or to enable a combat damage plan in Enchantress lists, cumulative buff Auras that increase in size based on the number of enchantments you control provide a huge increase in power to a single creature. By suiting up an opponent's commander and forcing it to attack with goad, you can take a giant chunk of an enemy's life total out or remove them from the game entirely via commander damage.

One of the main drawbacks of Aura-heavy decks in Commander is a particular weakness to single-target disruption. Normally, spot removal is a little difficult to use efficiently in Commander, but Auras essentially let those single-target spells trade up in value since they’ll also go to the graveyard if their host creature dies. To make this a win-win, you can place your Auras on your opponents’ creatures to encourage your opponents to use their removal on their creatures instead of yours. Even so, your Auras will still fall off no matter whose creature bore them. To remedy this we’ll want to include some ways to recur Auras (or Auras that recur themselves), or cards to better protect the enchanted creature from removal in a way that doesn’t just reanimate it later (so we’ll be avoiding Kaya’s Ghostform, at least for this type of upgrade).

Another way to compensate for the weakness to removal comes in the next class of upgrades: graveyard recursion in general. While Lorehold is better known for its focus on graveyard strategies, Silverquill decks still have some options to interact with the ‘yard to reuse some resources.

Even though Killian comes with card draw printed right in the text box, precon decks almost always need more card draw, so I’ll be adding in some extra draw power to help keep things speeding along. Finally, casting enchantments with Killian out lets you be interactive at sorcery speed, but you can make use of the flash keyword and some other trickery to allow you to affect the board in real-time. I also want to highlight some other ways to shift Auras around to allow for more flexible and dynamic playstyles.

Research Topics

First, let's start out quick and easy with a two-card package of potent buffs to punch up statlines.

Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters are two of the quickest and simplest enchantments-matter buff spells that give the enchanted creature a huge boost to their combat statistics to take big chunks of life from your opponents.

Next, let's go over some recursion pieces and cards that let you interact with your own graveyard. Remember, if a creature with an Aura leaves the battlefield, all Auras attached to it go to their owners' graveyards, so it's vital we cover this weakness from a few angles.

Nomad Mythmaker is a repeatable way to pull Auras out of the graveyard. Notably, this effect can be used at instant speed, so don't feel pressured to use it right away. You can wait until someone points a removal spell at a creature and pull out a protective aura to fizzle the interaction, or use it after an opponent buffs up a big creature to tag it with Killian's goad trigger.

Mass reanimation spells are usually quite powerful, and Retether certainly doesn't disappoint. It saves a ton of mana in value by pulling all Aura cards out of your graveyard to enchant creatures on anyone's battlefield, not just your own. This is a potent late-game reanimation spell to recur all of the Auras your opponents worked so hard to keep off the board. As a bonus, Killian will trigger off of all of these Auras spilling back out onto the battlefield and can goad practically everyone's creatures. You can even use this offensively to buff all your own creatures, tap down one opponent's creatures with Killian's triggers, and alpha strike them out of the game.

While not a recursion piece itself, Umbra Mystic cuts down on the overall need for recursion by protecting the creature your Auras are enchanting from conventional destruction effects. An important thing to keep in mind is that this will not prevent players from targeting the auras themselves with removal. Still, this makes all of your Aura carriers much stickier on the board, getting lots of extra mileage out of your investments.

Spirit Loop is another double-duty inclusion. Not only does it help to pad your life total by granting pseudo-lifelink to the enchanted creature, but it also bounces back to your hand if it ever hits the graveyard. At only two mana, you can almost always count on having it available to you if the creature it enchants leaves play.

Now let's take an opportunity to talk about some extra ways to draw cards. Killian lets you draw up to four cards per turn cycle, but you still need consistent draw effects so that you can keep hitting your land drops and casting cheap Auras.

Lord Skitter's Blessing acts as a cheaper and more synergistic version of Phyrexian Arena. It comes down a turn quicker, though it requires you to control a creature to get the additional Wicked Role Aura token, and it triggers Killian twice for that sweet, sweet efficiency.

Mesa Enchantress is a no-brainer for white-inclusive Enchantress lists, and if Killian didn't have a card draw effect tacked on, I would have been very concerned by its conspicuous absence from the list. Fortunately, it was recently reprinted in the Miracle Worker precon from Duskmourn: House of Horror which has plenty more options available to slot into this deck if you want to mash the two together.

Finally, I want to take a quick look at some ways to move Auras around or cast them at instant speed to more dynamically affect the board throughout the rapidly-changing games of Commander you're sure to participate in.

One of the more famous partner commanders printed in Commander Legends, Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist gives you the ability to slide around any number of Auras you control to a single permanent, regardless of which player controls the original enchanted creature or the new recipient. While this ability only triggers once per combat, this effect lets you grease the political wheels by liberating a goaded creature from Coercive Impetus or lock down a new target with Darksteel Mutation.

Though the buff Guardian's Magemark confers seems minor, the utility it grants is huge. To start, the spell acts as a conventional combat trick, allowing you to buff a wide board of Aura-carrying creatures with an anthem effect that can give you that extra little bit of reach you need to close out a game. Additionally, the ability to cast the spell at instant speed provides another avenue of changing the landscape of combat right after an unsuspecting opponent swings in with their creatures.

Silver Medalist Debaters

In order to stick to ten simple additions and ten easy cuts, I had to omit several honorable mentions that I thought would make this deck unique from other executions of Politics and Enchantress strategies. Take a quick peek at them here:

Kitsune Mystic is slow and mana-intensive, but once flipped, you can slide around Auras similar to Ardenn without the restriction of once per combat and only from one creature to another.

While you will probably place a chunk of your Auras on your opponent's creatures, the ones you keep for your own creatures will help Necromancer's Magemark recur them if they die in combat or are destroyed.

In the vein of recursion, Unfinished Business will not only reanimate a key creature from your graveyard, but bring up to two Auras back and trigger Killian's goad ability twice as well.

Outdated Notes

Whether lacking power or a tie to the overall theme, every Commander preconstructed deck has at least a couple of cards that don't contribute to the deck enough and can be replaced with the intended upgrades. Here's a quick list with some brief explanations:

Intended as political pieces, these three cards can be fun minigames or light restrictions that encourage interaction and dealing with opponents, but they don't contribute to the Aura-centric strategy of the deck.

Similarly to the other Politics pieces, running these cards incurs the risk of benefiting our opponents just a little bit too much for the mana you have to invest in them. These can be strong cards in a Politics archetype deck, but neither of them advance our count of Auras and Aura pay-offs.

While Inklings are visually appealing and friendly smudges of living goop, Killian doesn't care about tokens enough to warrant keeping these Inkling engines around.

While these cards can be helpful and synergistic to your overall gameplan, they cost too much mana and act far too slowly to realistically beef up the deck. You want to stay low to the ground and build an advantage incrementally.

Scholarship Funding

Just like in a real North American educational institution, Strixhaven University rewards its financially endowed students with additional benefits as long as they're willing to fork over the dough. If you're able to make some bigger purchases to amp up your brew, take a look at upgrading the mana base for the deck and consider some of the following options:

Able to blank either a single creature or an entire quadrant of battle-ready monsters, Galadriel's Dismissal is an excellent way to control the pace of the game for a turn without also removing your precious Auras that are attached to those creatures. At $21, this spell is best-in-class for the flexibility to slow down your opponents or save your creatures from a sweeper. Clever Concealment is a similar option for cheaper, but it can only phase out permanents you control, so it's better suited as boardwipe protection specifically.

As is seemingly the case for many Magic X Warhammer 40K singles, Nurgle's Rot is an uncommon commanding a price tag of $11 for the ability to recur itself at the cheapest rate among Auras that recur themselves when the enchanted creature dies, and even gives you a chump blocker to boot.

Since Universes Beyond products apparently contain all the heat, let's keep the ball rolling with the $14 Codsworth, Handy Helper. This chatty robot pulls triple duty as protection for Killian, ramp for Auras, and another way to scoot around your buff enchantments back over to your half of the board.

Under budget constraints, you have to work a little harder to be able to cast Auras at instant speed. Sigarda's Aid cuts out the legwork and lets you flash in Aura spells whenever you want, which is a massive benefit to the deck's gameplan, but it comes at a hefty price tag of $17.

Finally, here are a collection of pricey Game Changer spells that can take your deck to the next level:

Final Flourish

Here's a visual view of the decklist after all of the changes we've outlined in this article:

Want to fire up this upgraded precon right now and show it off to your friends? The share link is available right here for you to snag. Head on over to our multiplayer platform and start up a lobby, or play in our Playtester to familiarize yourself with the playstyle.

If you need to find some players for a pod, hop on to our Discord server and give a shout to get a game going. I hope you found this upgrade guide helpful! Check back every day this week for new upgrade guides for all of the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander precons so you can plan out your upgrades when the full release comes later this month!

The Best Way to Play Commander Online

For the easiest way to play Commander online with your friends or meet new opponents on the field of battle, visit EDHLAB.gg and check out our Play Online feature!

EDHLAB does not support the use of generative AI as a means to produce content. Any articles you read on our website will never incorporate generative AI for written or visual materials.